Manufacturing Intelligence Technology Landscape

A trio of demographic trends has emerged in manufacturing plants and control rooms, particularly in Western economies, to create a “perfect storm” for MI solutions:⁷

1. The rising “gray wave” of baby boomers is about to break on the shore of manufacturing. As these longtime workers walk through the plant gates into retirement, a significant volume of practical experience and domain expertise is leaving and creating a knowledge vacuum.
2. A new, younger workforce is replacing the baby boomers, one that might be called the “video game generation.” This generation is used to acquiring and processing information and knowledge visually and at high rates.
3. Graduation rates are falling in the technical fields that drive innovation. The convergence of these factors is driving the heightened focus on MI solutions.

As it becomes increasingly clear that the way forward in manufacturing requires that the next generation of manufacturing decision-makers be given access to a different set of applications than their baby boomer predecessors.

“The operators of tomorrow will be expected to make a broader set of decisions that go beyond the traditional boundaries of process control,” says Mike Tay, manager of sales engineering at Pavilion Technologies, a Rockwell Automation company. “The drive to the top is fueling the need to ensure that minute-by-minute decisions in the control room are aligned with the corporate business strategy.”⁸ Recent research from industry analyst Frost & Sullivan backs this contention, showing that the need to integrate real-time manufacturing data with diverse business systems is driving the growth in MI.⁹

Manufacturing Intelligence solutions are helping to bridge the gap between production and business environments. The continuing presence of inflexible legacy systems is facilitating the use of intelligent analytics to reduce complexity and simplify decision-making. The track-and-trace function of MI provides the capability to handle complex business scenarios, and significantly reduces or eliminates reliance on traditional manual data process analysis. MI software solutions also provide seamless enterprise-wide, real-time visibility of information.

The MI market is in addition merging new functionalities with existing market offerings on homogeneous platforms to deliver substantial value to end-users. The need for integrated systems on a unified platform is driving consolidation. The acquisition of pure-play EMI and MI vendors by major ERP, automation, and MES companies speeds integration and maximizes the value proposition of Manufacturing Intelligence. While a low level of market awareness persists (when compared with other enterprise or manufacturing software solutions), the continuing technological developments and compelling benefits of MI should help overcome this barrier.
According to Frost & Sullivan, EMI vendors must provide value-added services to set their brand apart from other commercial, off-the-shelf products.

According to Frost & Sullivan, EMI vendors must provide value-added services to set their brand apart from other commercial, off-the-shelf products. This is particularly important in a market where product differentiation and price sensitivity are low. Strategic acquisitions will offer vendors the possibility of widening their user base and venturing into new applications, as well as into niche markets heretofore unengaged. The need to improve service portfolios and strengthen the distribution base remains critical for steady business progression and development. Frost & Sullivan expects the world enterprise manufacturing intelligence market to attain revenues of $2.58 billion by 2014.¹⁰

Best-in-class manufacturers are implementing MI solutions across their enterprise and supply chain networks to deliver automated alerts, real-time visibility, and contextualization of plant floor data to drive operational intelligence.¹¹ While providing visibility to data is essential in today’s complex manufacturing environments, the real value comes in placing data into an operational and business context. Using that intelligence to drive real-time actions is what creates competitive advantage.

Industry analyst Aberdeen Group recommends the following guidelines to manufacturers that are entertaining the implementation of enterprise manufacturing intelligence solutions to achieve best-in-class performance:

• Implement EMI to integrate plant data from disparate sources with business content to deliver operational intelligence.
• Drive Manufacturing Intelligence initiatives under the sponsorship of plant-floor management responsible for operational performance.
• Implement role-based dashboards throughout the plant floor.
• Adopt remote access capabilities to provide visibility of critical data and to send alerts to key decision-makers.¹²

Some suppliers to the process industries have muddied the MI waters by confusing manufacturing awareness with Manufacturing Intelligence. Dashboards displaying performance metrics tied to historical information can only provide hindsight; this retrospective insight is helpful in understanding what has happened, but is not necessary in anticipating what is about to happen.

On the other hand, model-based predictive Manufacturing Intelligence solutions have the capability to put forward events that are about to happen, providing manufacturers with the functionality to test scenarios so that operators can make optimal decisions before events occur. Predictive solutions can provide insight into the business impact of operating decisions by using process models in combination with financials from ERP systems. This information is presented on role-based dashboards showing where you are, where you want to be, and the requisite steps to get where you want to be. Tay calls this “the true essence of actionable intelligence.”¹³