Manufacturing Intelligence (MI) - Engineering Industries eXcellence

Big Data in Manufacturing

As the pace of business accelerates, there is greater need for companies to see plant floor activity across the enterprise in order to make faster, more informed decisions. But complex supply chains, distributed operations and data captured in different formats can make gaining access to such critical operational intelligence difficult. What is the right solution to enable you to leverage vast amounts of information in order to analyze production and understand trends that support smarter decisions at the organizational level?

What is Manufacturing Intelligence?

Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI), or Manufacturing Intelligence (MI), refers to software systems that integrate different sources of operational data for the purpose of deeper analytics, reporting, visual summaries and the sharing of data between enterprise-level and plant-floor systems. While some may equate MI with Business Intelligence (BI), there is a difference. BI traditionally measures sales, revenues and other Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are of a corporate nature. Manufacturing Intelligence, on the other hand, measures the productivity of both the humans and the machines on your factory floor. MI can plug into BI to add more value to the enterprise, but, by itself, it can still be used as an independent stream of insight into manufacturing operations.

MI systems rely on Big Data analytics compiled from the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and other manufacturing and business planning systems, including Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), quality management systems, planning and scheduling systems, Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) systems and others. MI systems integrate, connect and unify these data sources into one accessible analytical model, providing capabilities to explore and drill down the information into contextualized data based on each end user's role and point of interest.

Through data analytics, Manufacturing Intelligence can monitor the factory’s entire infrastructure, enabling users to understand which machines are not producing to specifications and to improve overall resource effectiveness and efficiency. Workers have access to this information in real time, so issues can be addressed as they occur. MI also produces historical data to track past performance and outcomes and compare them to current or future needs. At the enterprise level, MI systems can be used to benchmark and compare production runs or to predict various plant operations.

Features of Manufacturing Intelligence (MI) Systems

Real-time and/or historical data reporting
Real-time and/or historical data analysis
Plant-level and/or enterprise-level drill down analysis
Advanced analytics
Data warehousing
Data marts
Comprehensive data visualization
Scorecards and dashboards
Custom and standard Key Performance Indicator (KPI) calculations
Data mining
Integration and standardization of different data systems/sources

Benefits of Manufacturing Intelligence (MI) Systems

Respond more quickly to changes
Improve overall production performance
Make better, more informed business decisions
Establish best practices
Establish benchmarking for continuous improvement
Support lean initiatives

Manufacturing Intelligence systems are playing an increasingly integral role in driving mission-critical decisions within today's manufacturing organization. Engineering has both the knowledge and the experience needed to deploy standard and customized MI solutions in order to help your business stakeholders make more informed decisions backed up by tangible evidence.