IoT Advanced Analytics: Forging a Factory of the Future
Utilizing IoT technology, advanced data analytics, and digital transformation to automate operations,
improve inventory management, and forge a Factory of the Future.
Lost manufacturing assets drain time from schedules when employees spend time searching and sometimes
When it comes to implementing a digital transformation strategy, an enterprise-wide change management effort is needed.
A Fortune 100 Defense Manufacturer’s key stakeholders understood the challenges that came with enacting wide-scale change; they needed to influence:
- Key senior leaders
- IT security
- Facility operators.
In order for the two business area leaders who pioneered the Factory of the Future vision, they identified the need for a collaborative culture.
In order to influence and realize their vision, they brought in other stakeholders from a newly engaged business area within the organization.
With leaders from three business areas working closely together, they needed to show business value, that the proposed solution was secure, and that this would help facility operators do their jobs better. The coalition of leaders focused on three primary benefits, each of which positively impacted the core group of people needed to successfully change the overall culture.
When it comes to implementing a digital transformation strategy, an enterprise-wide change management effort is needed.
A Fortune 100 Defense Manufacturer’s key stakeholders understood the challenges that came with enacting wide-scale change; they needed to influence:
Primary Benefits:
- Focus on specific use cases at a smaller scale to easily calculate a pilot’s ROI.
- Identify vendors willing to partner on meeting security requirements and ease IT concerns.
- Select use cases that removed common facility operation barriers to influence collective buy-in.
The efforts put forward by these innovative leaders changed the culture and cleared the path for digital transformation adoption and IoT implementation.
Internet of Things (IoT) technology was identified as a primary innovative solution to improve quality standards, increase machine efficiency and uptime, and collect continuous streams of data to unlock advanced analytics The company identified Thinaer, founded by CEO Bryan Merckling, and its BLE sensor technology as the best solution to realize their Factory of the Future vision.
Thinaer’s sophisticated software, advanced data analytics, and collaborative working style convinced this Fortune 100 Defense Manufacturer to establish a strategic partnership.
The company’s historical ways of working relied on inventory and asset management methods that created inefficiencies in factory processes. The outdated systems and processes in place did not collect meaningful data, which hindered the ability to derive reliable analytics.
Without reliable analytics, the company had limited insight into factory processes which made action reactive rather than proactive.
Identified Challenges:
- Outdated Technology
- Inefficient Factory Processes
- Human-error-prone quality control methods
Example of Why Change was Needed:
One of the company’s factory’s produced magnesium parts using a sophisticated piece of machinery. The factory typically produced 50-60 parts per month. Due to infrequent monitoring and human-entered results, the factory did not receive any early indication that the machine was failing. By the time the maintenance team arrived, it was too late, the machine had already produced 5 scrap parts.
