Data Driven Manufacturing Unleashes Performance and Profitability

Smart homes, smart cars, smart phones.. We want all our “things” to be smart, green and efficient. But how "smart" are the factories in which our food, medicine or cloths are produced in? Are they running as efficiently?  

After going through three revolutionary periods, the manufacturing industry has streamlined and automated most of the production processes. This has helped produce the same quality goods and decrease costs. Our factories are tailored to do the same things repeatedly. This type of production method could be fine when demand and supply are 100% predicted. However, the reality is often different: customers demands change, raw material prices fluctuate, inventory levels differ over short times. A site that cannot adapt to these changing requirements, experiences pressure on all aspects: including quality, cost and time. This type of production cannot “smart”.    

Data Islands within Factories

Factories are like people; they are born small and they grow with time. During its lifetime, they adapt new equipment, new IT infrastructure people and processes. Doing so, they form data islands. Equipment store valuable production data, ERP systems capture business relevant data, building management systems house environment related data. But none of these data sources exchange information. They form data sources that are not connected. Furthermore, linking these data sources is a manual effort and require considerable time. Having limited resources and time, mostly these sources cannot be linked and analyzed together.     

What is Smart Factory?

In a factory, there are three characteristics that makes it a “smart” one:

·      data is captured from all possible sources

·      these data sources are linked and analyzed together taking the business rules of that industry into account

·      the outcome of any analysis drive day-to-day business decisions

The above three characteristics form a feedback loop which provides an agile and efficient method. Furthermore, decision making based on interconnected data, provides transparency to the business. Any critical outcome from the factory floor can fully be reflected to the decisions that are taken. Having the transparency eases the daily lives of operators because their daily challenges are reflected to the business. Additionally, this transparency also supports managers and executives by helping them make the right decisions based on real and live data sources.