Data is king so don’t be the court jester

Data is king but without correct interpretation can leave you feeling like the court jester—how manufacturers can turn data into profits

Knowing your data has emerged over the past 5 years as the single most important tool for manufacturers to thrive. The international manufacturing market can, at best, be described as weathering a volatile storm with international conflict and post-pandemic recovery factors in play.

Grappling with what AI means for manufacturers and, indeed, what it means for society as a whole, has a lot of people thinking about the data they possess, the data they give away, and the data that they have the potential to harness and convert to increase profits and optimise supply chain management.

This data and what to do with it is why ECI Solutions’s Alora Business Unit Leader, Duane Clement, developed IoT tools back in 2014 in his business, Data Inventions, and it is the reason he merged that business with ECI Solutions in August 2022.

“Back then, I realised that the key to our product, Alora, manufacturing software, was that it analysed an amazing amount of data from machines on the manufacturing factory floor and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to inform decisions with insights into real-time production performance,” Duane said.

“It’s great to have a lot of data but without some sort of structure—a way to view it quickly and be able to find what you need when you need it—it’s like a mess of cooking ingredients in a fully stocked pantry when what you really want is that double-chocolate mud cake you’re craving.

“A whole load of production data, like a messy pantry, is overwhelming and quite useless without an ERP system, the recipe, to interpret it relative to your schedule and targets so you know whether you are on track to make what you planned to make, or not,” he said.

The key to ‘making the cake’ is analysing and interpreting manufacturing data as things are happening, fully integrating your ERP system seamlessly with machine monitoring data, to increase productivity, and limit unplanned downtime.

The drivers for international manufacturing success

Duane identifies 3 drivers for manufacturing success.

“For a manufacturing business to succeed in today’s volatile market, they must understand and optimise labour and machine time, reduce costs, and enable their employees with actionable information,” he said.

Duane, in his 18-months as the International Alora Business Unit Leader for ECI Solutions, has spoken with manufacturers the world-over.

“Our manufacturing customers come from my home state of Pennsylvania as well as all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and Poland,” Duane said.

“Nothing inspires my workday more than talking with manufacturers and the people doing the work on the factory floor and showing them how a product like Alora along with an ERP system, like M1, can make sense of data analysis jobs in a way that can grow profits and make it easier for companies and their employees to achieve greater success.”

Experience drives innovation

Duane started his career understanding the power of data and that understanding has been harnessed to great effect in each role he’s undertaken.

“In my early career I worked with Procter & Gamble and that’s where I grew to understand the discipline required to take full advantage of data and experienced the upside of getting it right—with standardised processes and data-driven decisions, we could predict the outcome of new product launches and invest in the areas that drove the greatest success,” he said.

“With the advent of the internet, mobile technologies and big data analytics, we have access to more data than ever before. The companies that harness this data more effectively than their competitors will win.”

Data analysis is power

For manufacturers, the sheer volume of data being generated and the immediacy of the decisions that need to be made have overwhelmed the manual processes and disconnected systems they leaned on in the past.

“Manufacturers would be wise to harness their data as effectively as possible,” Duane said.

“Standalone ERP systems can tell a manufacturer what should be occurring, but without access to real-time production data there might be a disconnection with the reality on the factory floor. That’s where Alora comes in.

“Alora collates the data from the machines and feeds that into the ERP so that the workers on the factory floor can get real-time snapshots of machine health at the same time as managers in their offices can see how machine operation will impact delivery schedules and therefore profits—the optimum in machine intelligence.”

Data transparency is key to effective decision making

Duane likens Alora to a machine x-ray—providing a company with true visibility into manufacturing health and the underlying issues that impede performance.

“With visibility you can make decisions based on real-time data analysis and pivot accordingly, making significant improvements,” Duane said.

“Without visibility into production performance in real-time manufacturers today are, on average, 30 percent utilised, or less. And, with most companies struggling to attract qualified workers, buying more machines is not a lock to increase capacity—manufacturing today requires more smarts than brute force,” Duane said.

“The days of being manual and accepting inefficiencies are gone, growth in contemporary manufacturing is now reliant on high-tech, and data-driven decisions.

“Workers on the factory floor need the right data to make informed decisions because the margin between a successful business and one struggling to make a profit, lies in making sure that labour and machine time are optimised with minimised unplanned downtime.”

Accessibility to data analysis software encourages business-wide problem solving

Duane points to the subtle effects Alora can have on the workforce in a manufacturing business.

“When everyone can see the same information, can view the same data in a dashboard with alerts when quotas are slipping and so function as a data analyst, then everyone can identify issues and pivot to solutions.

“This transparency can change worker behaviour—everyone can see how the data can be used and see how the actions they take impact their teammates and company performance. Better teamwork and more collaboration improves employee satisfaction and equates to better productivity and greater profits,” Duane said.

Improving employee and machine productivity is what Alora is all about and Duane and the ECI Solutions’s team is happy to be driving improvements in manufacturing businesses around the world, including in Australia where Alora has recently entered the market.

To take advantage of Alora in Australia and learn how it can integrate with an ECI ERP such as M1 visit https://www.ecisolutions.com/en-au/products/alora-machine-intelligence/request-a-demo/.