Q: What is the current state of BI within manufacturing?
A: Most manufacturers remain stuck in the Dark Ages with business intelligence. Those great reports we all saw during the demos from ERP/MRP systems 25 years ago still haven’t been built or, if they exist, are green-screened. BI in manufacturing mostly focuses on reporting. Yet, there’s hope. We see leading organizations transforming their analytics and BI efforts to move from reactive to proactive sensing. New and traditional data types are being supported to include content, geo-spatial, hardware, location-based, machine data, metrics, mobile, RFID, streaming data, and social.
One emerging area is device-to-device communications. Take mobile, location-based information and device-to-device sensing, and now you have a data deluge filled with rich information on patterns, trends, and benchmarks that can be used to optimize the manufacturing process, predict demand, and avert any dangers or errors.
Q: What are the top three business drivers behind the need for more BI in manufacturing organizations?