Big Data: The New Currency in Manufacturing

The changing dynamics in manufacturing has shifted from offering local solutions to enterprise-level insights that are being strategically monetized.

Today manufacturers are taking a very systematic approach to everything. From engineering and production methods down to their business models, manufacturing has become more flexible, more networked and is producing massive amounts of data. The data that is generated in the system alone will not help your business. It is how you use that data that will make the system effective and profitable. In today’s manufacturing IIoT, you should look at all of the data that is being generated in production as a new profit center.

General Electric predicts investment in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to top $60 trillion by 2025. Leading to $13 trillion ROI.

Analysis and insight is now required from the front office through the supply chain. Data is everywhere.

• There is data in production
• There is data in quality
• There is data in processes
• There is data in engineering
• There is data in the supply chain

With big data being produced by every machine on the factory floor, you are receiving useful information about production every minute of the day. Understanding that data and making it work for you is how you monetize it. The ingestion and analysis of huge amounts of varied data at once, from multiple sources and multiple plants, now can funnel into software like Siemens Team Center collaboration platform. By implementing an enterprise class solution, like Team Center, that could take data from many different types of sources in many locations, you begin to make small percentage gains in efficiency that can become huge dollars at scale.

Data is being used to:

•     Improve the efficiency of manufacturing operations
•     Improve quality and logistics
•     Keep your factories running
•     Improve business processes
•     Transform your business model
•     Positively impact your bottom line

Now you must be equipped to capture this data in order to monetize it and use it to your advantage. “In terms of the ‘Internet of Things Market’, manufacturing is the largest opportunity of any industrial category. The most recent estimates are that it will go from approximately zero now to over a billion dollars within the next five years. So by whatever scale you intend to use it, it’s a big opportunity”, Jon Sobel, Co-founder and CEO of Sight Machine. Implementing new software to help you clearly understand your data and allow you to identify what went right or wrong in the process, by using predictive analysis or a digital twin for example, can sometimes save you millions. That is if you are capturing your data and intentionally using it to improve your processes. There is a huge amount of data produced daily that simply sits on your manufacturing floor that you need to start thinking very purposefully about using to your company’s advantage.