Data has long been the essential lifeblood of

manufacturing, driving efficiency

improvements, reductions in waste, and
incremental profit gains. But today, a new breed
of Big Data analytics is taking over
manufacturing and providing a totally new
dimension to the value of research and trend
analysis. Now, data is no longer being used for
reporting past activities; its helping
manufacturers predict future events, foresee risk,
understand their extended value chain, and
enhance the customer experience they deliver.

Big Data in
Manufacturing
Big Potential for Operational
Benefits

Pratik Gupta
Overview

In the past 20 years or so, manufacturers have been able to reduce waste and variability in their production
processes and dramatically improve product quality and yield (the amount of output per unit of input) by
implementing lean and Six Sigma programs. However, given the sheer number and complexity of
production activities that influence yield, manufacturers need a more granular approach to diagnosing and
correcting process flaws. Big Data provides just such an approach.

Big data is the proliferation of data from various systems, devices, and applications whose size makes it
challenging to capture, manage, and process within a tolerable period of time using traditional software
solutions. Big data sizes can range from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data-
set. Massive amounts of operational data are coming online with the ever-increasing set of advanced devices
and equipment, a movement often referred to as the Industrial Internet. Forward-thinking businesses are
leveraging this data for operational excellence and predictive analysis to create a competitive advantage and
accelerated growth. This paper discusses what big data means for the industrial sector, significant
implications it will have in the near future and how critical insights enabled by big data can significantly
improve operational performance.

Industrial businesses have entered the

age of big data, whereby the volume,
variety and complexity of data they
manage is exploding at record rates. For
example, a CPG company that produces
a personal care product generates 5,000
data samples every 33 milliseconds. To
leverage big data, industrial businesses
need the ability to support different types
of information, the infrastructure to store
massive data sets, and the flexibility to
leverage the information once it is
collected and stored, enabling historical
analysis of critical trends to deliver real-
time predictive analysis.

Google, Amazon and Facebook are

pushing the envelope on big data needs.
The groundwork these companies have
created can also be leveraged in the
industrial sector. For example, Hadoop
is an Open Source technology that is
rapidly evolving. It is a tool that enables
data storage scale using commodity
hardware, distributing data across many
low-cost computers. Once distributed,
data is located and processed by
MapReduce, a framework where data is
processed in parallel across many nodes
in a cluster. It allows processing to be
mapped to the data across many
locations, and then reduces the outputs for similar data elements into a single result.
Big Data and C-Execs

To identify the ways leading manufacturers are approaching Big Data trends and attitudes among todays
manufacturers. LNS Research teamed up with MESA International to create Metrics that Matter survey.
200 executive respondent on the ways they feel companies will mine both plant and enterprise Big Data for
improving manufacturing performance.

As the largest overall function of a manufacturing company is to ultimately produce products, its not
surprising that better production/forecasting was the top response from survey respondents, with nearly
half choosing this response. Other top responses, such as being able to understand plant performance across
multiple metrics (45% of responses), servicing and supporting customers faster (39%), and real-time alerts
based on analyzing manufacturing data (38%) are in line with some of the important objectives and
challenges such as finding ways to overcome informational silos/disparate data sources and systems and
maintaining/developing a more customer-driven organization. A mere 5-6% felt that Big Data would not
have any future use or impact on their manufacturing performance. This is a clear indicator that
manufacturers today are viewing Big Data as a transformational, game changing technological capability
thats likely to have broad implications across the organization and enterprise.

Big Datas Impact on Manufacturing Is Growing

These are some example use cases that illustrate how big data is being used in manufacturing, helping to
optimize operations, improve quality and reduce costs.

Accelerating the integration of IT, manufacturing and operational systems making the
vision of Industrie 4.0 a reality. Industrie 4.0 is a German government initiative that promotes
automation of the manufacturing industry with the goal of developing Smart Factories. Big data is already
being used for optimizing production schedules based on supplier, customer, machine availability and cost
constraints. Manufacturing value chains in highly regulated industries that rely on German suppliers and
manufacturers are making rapid strides with Industrie 4.0 today. As this initiative serves as a catalyst to
galvanize diverse multifunctional departments together, big data and advanced analytics will become
critical to its success.

Integrating advanced analytics across the Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze,
Improve and Control) framework to fuel continuous improvement. Getting greater insights into
how each phase of a DMAIC-driven improvement program is working, and how the efforts made impact
all other areas of manufacturing performance is nascent today. This area shows great potential to make
production workflows more customer-driven than ever before.

Greater visibility into supplier quality levels, and greater accuracy in predicting supplier
performance over time. Using big data and advanced analytics, manufacturers can view product
quality and delivery accuracy in real-time, making trade-offs on which suppliers receive the most time-
sensitive orders. Managing to quality metrics becomes the priority over measuring delivery schedule
performance alone.

Measuring compliance and traceability to the machine level becomes possible. Using sensors
on all machinery in a
production center
provides operations
managers with immediate
visibility into how each is
operating. Having
advanced analytics can
also show quality,
performance and training
variances by each
machine and its
operators. This is
invaluable in streamlining
workflows in a production
center, and is becoming
increasingly commonplace.

Selling only the most profitable customized or build-to-order configurations of products

that impact production the least. For many complex manufacturers, customized or build-to-order
products deliver higher-than-average gross margins yet also costs exponentially more if production processes
arent well planned. Using advanced analytics, manufacturers are discovering which of the myriad of build-
to-order configurations they can sell with the most minimal impact to existing production schedules to the
machine scheduling, staffing and shop floor level.

Quantify production impacts on financial performance with visibility to the machine

level. Big data and advanced analytics are delivering the missing link that can unify daily production
activity to the financial performance of a manufacturer. Being able to know to the machine level if the
factory floor is running efficiently, production planners and senior management know how best to scale
operations. By unifying daily production to financial metrics, manufacturers have a greater chance of
profitably scaling their operations.

Service becomes strategic and a contributor to customers goals by monitoring products

and proactively providing preventative maintenance recommendations. Manufacturers are
starting to look at the more complex products they produce as needing an operating system to manage the
sensors onboard. These sensors report back activity and can send alerts for preventative maintenance. Big
data and analytics will make the level of recommendations contextual for the first time so customers can get
greater value. General Electric is doing this today with its jet engines and drilling platforms for example.

Increasing the accuracy, quality and yield of biopharmaceutical production. It is common in

biopharmaceutical production flows to monitor more than 200 variables to ensure the purity of the
ingredients as well as the substances being made stay in compliance. One of the many factors that makes
biopharmaceutical production so challenging is that yields can vary from 50 to 100% for no immediately
discernible reason. Using advanced analytics, a manufacturer was able to track the nine parameters that
most explained yield variation. Based on this insight they were able to increase the vaccines yield by 50%,
worth between $5M to $10M in yearly savings for the single vaccine alone.

Challenges

Connectivity: Manufacturing technologies currently include connected assets. The use of the cloud to
connect assets brings many advantages such as on-demand computing, resources, and storage, but also
creates connectivity and security issues.

Infrastructure: The goals of better, faster, more cost-efficient, and more flexible operations will deliver
terabytes (1,000 GB) of data to users per day. Manufacturers must have a new generation of IT
infrastructure to handle the data between the plant floor and the enterprise.

Politics: Enterprises will have to navigate the political complexities of getting teams and IT to work
together (convergence and alignment) and be convinced that moving from legacy to environment to
modernized internet and big data will produce productivity gains.

Quantity of Relevant data: Given the

massive scale and scope of Big Data,
companies need to focus on high-
impact data, intelligence that has the
potential to drive more strategic decisions.
The vast and multi-dimensional nature of
Big Data can be overwhelming. Big Data
becomes much more digestible and useful
if analytics team dial into the specifics,
rather than consider the entire universe of
information that exists.

Lack of Talent: Manufacturing

companies rarely have talent required to
process big data. Hiring new talent and
making them part of companys culture is also a big challenge for companies.

Time Frame for Execution Planning

Short Term

The integration of all manufacturing data throughout individual plants and across enterprises is necessary
to facilitate significant and immediate improvements in costs, safety, and environmental impacts. This data,
paired with advanced computer simulation and modeling, would create more robust manufacturing
intelligence that enables more flexible manufacturing, optimal production rates, and faster product
customization.
Longer Term

As manufacturing intelligence grows, companies would require software platform that can collect and
analyze data from multiple components which are part of manufacturing ecosystem. This smart
manufacturing will represent a major market disruption. With smart manufacturing, still in its early phases,
businesses should start using commercial components, including connectivity, IoT data, analytics, and
application management platforms and integrate them with their own in-house system integrators to create
a complete end-to-end solution across the value chain.

Big Data, Smart Manufacturing & The Industrial Internet of Things

Smart manufacturing has become a buzzword in the manufacturing sector as increasing efficiency and
productivity in factories through traditional methods have started to flatten. The term refers to the network
of machines containing embedded technology that allows them to communicate with each other. The basic
reason for the growth is the increasing number of IoT enabled smart connected devices and sensors that
release a large amount of heterogeneous data simultaneously. Data can be harnessed and analyzed using
IoT analytics tools and platforms to improve real-time decision making and customer experience.
Furthermore, end-to-end automation in various industries and deployment of predictive analytics in
businesses are driving the overall growth of this market. Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is leading to
the evolution of industry 4.0

Several countries such as Germany and China have pushed for smart manufacturing. Interestingly, the term
was included in Chinas five-year plan in 2010. In the U.S., the Industrial Internet has also attracted an
increased attention of venture capitalists (VCs) who invested $1.5 billion in IIOT related technologies. The
effort is being completed by industry participants. Siemens created the industry of the future fund. GE
recently announced a partnership with a big data incubator.

Trends and Predictions

The IoT analytics market is still at a nascent stage, but it is gradually expected to grow towards maturity in
the developed regions of North America and Europe. However, emerging regions such as the Asia-Pacific,
Middle Eastern, and African regions have great potential and are expected to achieve a bolstered growth
in the coming five years. Currently the market for smart manufacturing industry is and related technologies
is $131B which is expected to grow at 20% YOY to reach $392B by 2020. IOT analytics is 12% of the total
smart manufacturing industry and its share is expected to reach 20% by 2020. The 37% growth in IOT
analytics signifies the important role that Big Data is going to play in the growth if industry. Additionally,
the demand for cloud-based deployments is accelerating in this market due to its cost-effectiveness and the
benefits of hassle-free maintenance.
Smart Manufacturing Industry Analytics in Manufacturing
160
2020 $78
$392
140

2019 $59
120 $328

2018 $45
100 $273

80 2017 $34
$228

60 $26
2016 $190
40
2015 $20
$159
20
2014 $16
$131
0
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 $0 $50 $100 $150 $200 $250 $300 $350 $400 $450

North America Europe Asia-pacific Rest of the world Big Data Analytics Smart Manufacturing Industry

Though there is notable traction of IoT analytics in large enterprises, the emergence of platform-as-a-service
(PaaS) delivery models has increased its usage in small and medium businesses too. There are still certain
concerns restraining growth in this market, including the lack of highly efficient real-time analytics
algorithms. Companies have had limited ability to store, analyze, and effectively use all the data that has
been available. New big data processing tools are enabling real-time data-stream analysis that can provide
improvement in real-time problem solving and cost avoidance. Big data and analytics are foundations for
areas such as forecasting, proactive maintenance, and automation. Since the market is emerging, it is less
competitive with fewer entry and exit barriers. However, the control lies with niche players who provide
dedicated IoT analytics platforms, thereby increasing their bargaining capabilities among the small vendors
and start-ups.

The first issues that manufacturers must address include developing a vision and defining the infrastructure
needed to support the integration of existing facilities with new technologies. After those are in place, the
organization can put together an implementation plan and timetable for the transition to the new world of
IIoT. I imagine atleast few manufacturing companies will go under up by not utilizing IIoT/big data. The
average lifespan of an S&P 500 company has dramatically decreased over the last century, from 67 years in
the 1920s to just 15 years today. The average lifespan will continue to decrease as companies ignore or lag
changing business models ushered in by technological evolutions.

Conclusion

IoT data analytics will bring significant changes to the physical facilities of manufacturing organizations,
customer and supplier relationships, and the information systems that support efficient operations. The
evolution of IIoT will lead the way for introduction of smart devices, networking and data management
facilities throughout the supply chain. Still, IoT data analytics is still in a phase of early adoption. Most IoT
data analytics technologies and processes are still five to 10 years away from mainstream adoption. There's
a good reason for that. IoT deployments pose formidable challenges and typically require significant
investments in an array of technologies, plus new data management and analytics skills. Its very hard for
manufacturing companies operating at a razor-thin margin to secure the fund and apply towards
infrastructure development for Big Data analytics. Additionally, there are fewer proven technological
platforms for the companies to adopt. Most of the firms would wait and see the results of IOT analytics
before adopting it end-to-end. They may start using it for a for a limited section of operations to measure
the cost benefit analysis. However, this approach may lead to underestimation of benefits as end-to-end
connection is required for leveraging maximum value out of IIoT analytics. It is imperative that
organizations find effective ways to harness big data to remain competitive.
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