Technology Council, Factory Managers Council & Plant Engineers Council: Analytics in Today’s Manufacturing Industry

Managing by “gut feel” no longer applies in today’s business climate. Today, market leading businesses use data and analytics to inform and drive their decisions.  Analytic tools continue to evolve and improve, pushed by the large data volumes that are now available through widespread use of mobile and “Internet of Things” (IoT) technologies.  Organizations are applying and combining a variety of analytics technologies and techniques such as Operational, Predictive, Prescriptive, and Cognitive analytics.  While many of the recent advances in analytics target Big Data projects, both the tools and techniques can be applied across the entire organization to improve decision making and protect against corporate knowledge loss as key employees depart.

The Manufacturing Industry in particular can benefit from a wide variety of today’s analytics solutions that assist with identifying and making data-driven Production and Quality improvements, and refine customer segmentation to improve marketing success to drive sales growth.  Employing true Predictive Analytics technology goes way beyond Statistical Process Control that the Manufacturing Industry has utilized for years.  Becoming a data-driven organization involves a journey, beginning with understanding the relationship between existing data and decision making processes, and then creating a culture that values “data-driven decision making” to identify areas to gain competitive advantage.

About the presenter: David Russell is the Director of Predictive Analytics for LPA Software Solutions, a Rochester, NY based analytics consulting organization.  Over his 20-plus year career, David has applied his deep knowledge of data, analytics, and programming to develop solutions spanning military training research, remote sensing, bacterial genomics, manufacturing, distribution, hospitality, marketing, fraud detection, and demand forecasting.  David’s current focus is on assisting companies to identify opportunities for apply existing datasets to solving operational problems within the enterprise in order to gain competitive advantage.