Courage to Change in Manufacturing
Posted June 21st, 2013
For manufacturers, globalization means more competition and a more varied customer base. When these two dynamics are combined, companies have to find ways to produce the best products – faster and cheaper. Efficiency is now the goal of every manufacturer, and technology is increasingly being used to help maximize efficiency.
Manufactures are starting to connect the equipment found on the plant floor to the Internet via software and new hardware, in order to automatically produce information and actions that can optimize plant floor performance.
Data to Knowledge
Leveraging data is key, but turning the data into knowledge and then using that knowledge to make predictions is also of paramount importance.
The problem lies in the fact that there is so much data being produced, that it simply becomes background noise….something to be tuned out, not analyzed.
For example, according to a recent white paper – The Rise of Industrial Big Data – 4 trillion data points come every year from just one piece of equipment used in the manufacture of a single specific CPG product. When combined with the number of pieces of equipment used to manufacture that product and the number of other products manufactured in the same facility (and their corresponding machines) there simply is no way to describe that data as anything but big.
To collect this data, each piece of equipment is monitored closely by systems called “historians.” Currently, parameters such as temperature and vibration are measured at intervals timed in milliseconds. Data analysis is real-time, with management using that data to discover – say- equipment failure immediately and address it quickly.
Collecting, storing and managing that data has been cost prohibitive ($30,000 per managed terabyte per year). The huge volume of data has precluded most manufacturers from saving it and analyzing it.
Analysis is necessary…patterns can be discerned…taking plant management from being able to simply detect system failures to predicting system failures. Failing equipment can be replaced before it causes massive work stoppages.
Knowledge = Competitive Advantage
Industrial enterprises stand to gain from data analysis only if they have the capabilities to make that data accessible and understandable.
For example, 93% of C-level executives believe their organization is losing revenue – on average, 14% annually – as a result of not being able to fully leverage the information they collect.
This process starts with being able to collect, store and manage the large amounts (i.e. “big) of both historical and real-time data. Then, with the power of meaningful analytics, companies can turn that data into operational knowledge to support real-time, better-informed decisions – leading to a more efficient operation.
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