Today's manufacturing environment is challenging. There is becoming less and less margin for error in decisions. How do you make the best decisions possible? With the best information possible.
I was re-reading an interview in "Intelligent Enterprise" magazine with Doug Anderson, who is the CIO for a division of Corning. He said that one of the values that technology can offer is "smarter decisions with better, more timely information".
Take, for example, making capacity decisions. Some process changes (such as bringing new machinery on-line) require long lead times. If a change ends up creating over-capacity because the current utilization was not measured accurately, it can be a very costly venture.
How can this be prevented? By collecting detailed information and having the ability to analyze it in real-time. This has two benefits:
- You have the instantaneous status of products and processes to make operational decisions.
- You can base projections on detailed and up-to-date information for strategic decisions.
We have seen great value to our customers were we have implemented data collection and analysis systems.