Home » Data Analytics » Data Analytics in Manufacturing

Data Analytics in Manufacturing

Table of Contents

Introduction

Data analytics and machine learning are being used by manufacturers to detect production patterns, address issues quicker, and better manage resources. Data analytics’ capacity to detect possible problems early on allows manufacturers to improve their processes and minimize the expenses associated with material waste, high scrap rates, and downtime.

Data Analytics Implementation Made Easier

While data analysis can provide significant advantages to the manufacturing sector, applying them in a production environment can be difficult for various reasons. To begin with, the traditional data analytics process based on AI and ML is complex and time-consuming, with long lead times. A typical project lasts 6 to 9 months and includes data preparation, feature engineering, algorithm selection, model training, testing, and deployment.

In a manufacturing setting, getting quality data is challenging since each production site may have different ERP and factory execution systems. Manually cleaning and aggregating data, creating features, and producing models using other techniques may be time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive. AI/ML models are very likely to be obsolete by the time you complete training and validation.

Data analytics solutions based on conventional AutoML platforms are geared at data scientists and are challenging to utilize by production teams. These platforms are challenging to use and have a high learning curve. Vendors often fail to offer enough training or instruction in data science and AI implementation for everyday use cases. Many applications with just-in-time production have low latency requirements that need real-time processing. Under these challenging operating circumstances, an ML system should stream data analytical capabilities to analyze data in less than one second or even often, millisecond.

Use Cases

Data is more accurate and consistent.

The quality and consistency of data influence the capacity of any business to make successful forecasts. The diverse data formats from various sources make data quality management concerns in the manufacturing sector, ensuring obvious connections between your master data.

Data analysis assists you in establishing uniform quality throughout your data ecosystem to guarantee the accuracy of your findings. Otherwise, you won’t be able to see inconsistencies or duplication in your data, which may sabotage your forecasts on anything from future demand to labor requirements.

A data strategy is defined.

A company requires a solid data strategy built on top objectives to get the most out of data analytics or reporting.

Data analysis assists you in bridging the gap between technology and your company objectives and allowing you to achieve them most efficiently. But if you know your high-level company objectives, you still need to determine what decisions or activities will help you achieve them.

Data is centralized

With extensive data at your disposal, you’ll almost certainly require a centralized data lake to allow various business units to access it. Extracting data from different sources, transforming it into the proper format, and loading it into a consolidated storage system that a data analytics solution utilizes to provide transformational insight.

Even in the manufacturing industry, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution for data centralization. Your data lake or another hub must provide customizable accessibility and functionality to all your organization’s operations and business divisions. By evaluating your firm, you can establish the appropriate specs for your data analytics tool and any other data science applications your company may need.

Improve Workforce Management KPI Analytics

When it comes to recruiting, manufacturers are up against it. Effective personnel management is critical for every manufacturing company because of a scarcity of qualified experts and a competitive labor market.

Multiple worker management obstacles exist in the manufacturing industry, which is the problem. Employee productivity is affected by changing customer demands or equipment malfunction. According to recent statistics, annual total separations in the sector have increased year over year. Manufacturing companies are now in a situation where they must anticipate personnel, scheduling, training, and productivity problems more accurately.

You may analyze a plethora of data from several sources to get deep insight into your workforce by collaborating with a partner to improve your data analytical capabilities:

  • Demand from customers
  • Hiring patterns in the industry
  • Employee involvement inside the company
  • PTO use
  • Incidents involving safety
  • Employee output is high.
  • Negotiations on a contract
  • Employee-specific KPIs

Using this data to build a data analytics model helps you find the appropriate workforce balance (contingent or full-time) or forecast which workers are about to leave, lowering attrition.

Benefits for Manufacturers from Data Analytics

Analytics for Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance has many advantages. The first is that gathering data assists in predicting when maintenance is required rather than assuming it—improving the equipment’s uptime, allowing management to schedule maintenance or make changes before a problem occurs. Tool failure occurs when the amperage of the equipment rose in one case. It was challenging to track amperage; however, a function in the equipment’s software dashboard could give spindle load statistics. As more data is gathered and correlations established, data analytics becomes more accurate.

Quality Analytics

It is possible to be alerted when processes are out of tolerance or may cause quality issues by monitoring performance. Being able to halt or modify a process early may minimize or eliminate material waste and rework significantly by involving data analysis to evaluate the data.

Demand Prediction Analytics

The individual procedures and total lead can be tracked and stored to understand material and production needs better. KPIs are discovered when linked abilities grow, increasing software solutions’ capability, value, and accuracy. Data analysis predicting volume, timeframes, and market demand will aid in the direction of new equipment, goods, or processes’ economics and costs. Furthermore, when material costs are heavily influenced by politics, natural catastrophes, and other factors, utilizing data to predict consumption rates and shipping may help streamline supply chain management.

Analytics for the Workforce

Manufacturing’s Skills Gap is one of the most pressing issues. Manufacturers can anticipate future skills and labor needs by combining data from the process, the plant, and the globe. Allowing individuals to collaborate more efficiently with educators, advertise positions sooner, and upskill or reskill existing employees to fulfill labor demands. It can even be utilized better to manage labor and talent acquisition in volatile markets.

Topics in Data Analytics

Hits: 63