At first glance big data analytics may seem like a separate universe from the manufacturing industry. Big data seeks to make sense of a mountain of unclassified information that arrives all day every day into servers and analytics-driven AI. Manufacturing provides us with the tactile goods and products that help foster efficiency and comfort in our lives. But the crossover is both dramatic and obvious as soon as you see it. Big data and the advanced analytics that power data analytics as a whole are one and the same as the processes that facilitate manufacturing center uptime, measurements and targets of efficiency, and tasks that maintain the health, wellbeing, and productivity of the facility, its parts and tools, and human workforce.
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Streamline your operations with intelligent analysis.
leverages the powerful insights gained from analysis in order to make your manufacturing processes run smoothly. This strategy operates at all levels of business functionality from sourcing raw materials and scheduling work shifts to shipping out finalized products and initiating new order batches. Each of these stages of production is made more efficient through the implementation of a data analysis infrastructure.
Supply Chain Uptime
Sourcing materials may be the best place to begin in this circular stream of business practice. Finding high quality materials at the lowest possible rates is already something that your organization attempts to engage itself with. At a base level (even if you haven’t increased operational efficiency with data considerations as a core decision making function) you already utilize rudimentary predictive models in sourcing for your supply chain considerations. Returning to the same vendor over and over again functions as a data synthesis choice of the most instinctive order: you liked the product received and trust in the suppliers ability to continue producing this result. The truth is, business must constantly remain adaptive. Suppliers change formulas, run into extraction or production slowdowns, or are forced to navigate sudden international regulation changes that evaporate a prior competitive advantage. Because the landscape of competition is so uncertain and so fierce, it’s important to be constantly vigilant in seeking new products and suppliers at all times. Data analysis plays a central role in this research and decision making loop.
Production on your Shop Floor
Data analysis provides actionable insights that help increase efficiency and safety on the shop floor as well. While big data is crucial in reducing operating costs it also plays a major role in increasing the safety measures that protect your workforce from industrial accidents that can leave the fragile human body permanently injured and your company on the hook to pay out on a massive lawsuit. Injuries are bad for business, bad for morale, and for the health and happiness of your workforce. With data analytics, factories are getting smarter about all things that occur on the production floor. New products are beta tested with virtual assistance and manufacturing robots are taking over the most intensive and stressful tasks that human hands have had to perform in creating all of our daily goods for centuries. These advancements are only possible with the bolstering of business operations with data analytics and machine learning upgrades.
Your workforce holds on to its competitive advantage when all aspects of the manufacturing goals are accounted for and measurable in real time. Maintaining a happy roster of employees that are well cared for and feel safe in the office is a great start. Coupled with the incredible predictive analytics that help procurement officers find the best suppliers for raw materials, manufacturing firms are making great leaps forward at an alarming rate.