How do you become a data driven manufacturer

Execute with excellence and innovate at speed

In today’s rapidly changing and competitive world, manufacturers need more than just a good product to survive and grow, they must be able to execute with excellence and innovate at speed.

Manufacturers are looking to optimise their operations in order to increase productivity and profit by increasing efficiency and reducing cost, whilst being able to rapidly react to changing market needs and maintain cashflow.

Market-leading manufacturers have recognized the value of data in achieving these objectives and by creating an end-to-end, data-driven view of the business, from supply chain through production to distribution and supporting functions such as finance and HR, are using it to ensure that materials, personnel, equipment, logistics and cash are all aligned and optimised.

This will not be achieved overnight and an incremental approach will ensure that early benefits can be achieved which can be built-upon over time, leading to a data-driven journey.

SDG Group can guide and assist you on that data-driven journey, ensuring that you have a data strategy in place that supports your corporate objectives, defining a roadmap of initiatives to map out how the strategy may be achieved in practice, delivering projects that make it a reality and providing ongoing support if you need it.

Whether you are at the beginning of the journey, simply trying to bring together the data from around your business and production-line, looking to further improve your data-driven decisions or working to improve your Overall Equipment Efficiency (see below), SDG Group can help.

Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) – the Manufacturer’s Touchstone

Whilst not necessarily the focus for all manufacturers, for those looking to optimise their throughput and gain the best return on their capital investment, an important measure is Overall Equipment Efficiency. This is a measure of how well your production business is performing versus what it is theoretically capable of. It is a compound metric, based upon measurement of:

Quality
Performance
Availability

all of which can be measured and monitored if the relevant data can be captured and processed appropriately. Typical values vary from industry to industry however an average has been found to be around 60% with best-in-class manufacturers achieving in excess of 85%. This difference represents a significantly improved efficiency and, generally, profit.

Many manufacturers focus on their production line data alone, and this can certainly lead to improvements, however we would suggest that OEE can only be truly optimised by considering additional factors that can impact operation of the production line such as materials and staff availability, cashflow and outbound logistics; hence our suggestion that and end-to-end data-driven view of your business is required.

Manufacturers Are Businesses First and Foremost

Like any other business, manufacturers also have to manage the basics such as sales, purchases, budgets, forecasts and cashflow.

SDG Group has a long history of working with the CFO's office in areas such as consolidation, planning and budgeting, forecasting and performance dashboarding. We have expertise in integrated planning across lines of business and can help you to leverage advanced techniques, such as interactive dashboards and predictive modelling.

In today's uncertain marketplace, we are finding increased interest in areas such as cashflow forecasting and we have solutions and methodologies that can help you to realise value in the shortest time possible.

Data Management & Governance

It all starts with bridging the information silos within your organization and making data available for analysis. SDG Group has many years of experience of discovering, ingesting, transforming and relating data sets to form the bedrock for analysis. We deliver solutions that deliver stunning performance and flexibility by leveraging cloud data architectures and platforms, ensuring that your data architecture is fit for the challenges of the 21st Century.

We can help with data quality issues and apply robust data governance mechanisms to ensure that this data is understood, fit for purpose, trusted and made available in a compliant but highly flexible manner to power the analysis that you require.

Whether your problem is finding and making data accessible to those that need it, achieving a common understanding of your data assets across the business, meeting regulatory compliance around your use of data or bridging the silos of data across your organisation to enable rich analysis; we can help.

Some practical applications of Data Analysis in Manufacturing

Process Monitoring

This is a good starting point and applies to both production and supporting business processes. Getting a view on what is actually happening across your business in a timely and trusted manner should be your first objective.

Statistical Process Control

This is a more advanced form of process monitoring. By applying statistical algorithms to your data as it is generated in the production line, it is possible to automatically determine acceptable thresholds for key measures and hence detect issues earlier, thus significantly reducing quality defects.

Predictive Maintenance

By modelling historical machine failures, and the key behavioral trends leading up to them, it is possible to proactively detect on an ongoing basis early signs of potential equipment issues which, if left unattended could unexpectedly bring down your production line. This permits maintenance to be performed in scheduled windows before breakdowns occur, thereby managing the impact upon availability.

Supply Chain Analytics

The lack of even a small constituent of a product can slow or bring production to a halt, significantly affecting performance. By analysing order book, production schedules, purchasing and delivery information it is possible to predict shortages of materials or, conversely, prevent over-stocking of materials which could impact cashflow.

Personnel and Skills Analysis

Similarly, if appropriately skilled personnel are not available when needed, production throughput can be impacted. In addition to this, not being compliant with training requirements can have an impact upon employer liability, contractual obligations or validity of insurance.

Integrated Planning and Forecasting

Many companies still perform department-based planning, budgeting and forecasting using spreadsheets. This approach has many problems, including an inability for the impact of changes in the plan of one department (e.g. sales) to easily be seen on those of other departments (e.g. production or HR), let alone many “what-if?” scenarios, and true collaboration is almost impossible to achieve. An integrated planning solution solves these problems, enables many “what-if?” scenarios to be modelled, immediately showing the impact of these on other departments and permits predictive modelling to be incorporated for forecasting. Cashflow forecasting has become of particular interest in these difficult times.

Compliance

This is a broad topic and covers areas such as GDPR, financial and industry-specific regulations, environmental and social obligations. A data-driven organization can save many man-hours in preparation for audits and generation of compliance documentation, as well as averting potential business-impacting breaches. Robust data governance can prevent many compliance issues and presents a strong defence to the Information Commissioners Office should an issue occur.

Data-Driven Manufacturing