Boosting the Bottom Line: 3 Ways Data Can Drive Profit for Manufacturers with Mike Wertheim

08/30/19 • 32 min

In this episode, we talk with Mike Wertheim from Hayward Industries. Mike shares how Hayward is using data to boost the company's bottom line and outlines his team's top priorities for 2020.
3:41: 3 Ways Data Can Drive Profits
Mike: Data is important to everybody. For Hayward, we are a manufacturing company and it comes down to the bottom line. So, I'll give you 3 ideas of some things that make data very important to [us].

We are a big company in a mature market. The way to grow in that market is through acquisition. When you acquire a company and there's a different set of data, there's a lot of problems.
The other thing is we have traditionally been a B2B company. And we're trying to compete in this age of online purchasing and there are so many channels that people buy their products from. To do that, we've really got to go deeper and reach out to the actual consumers when possible.
The last thing is technology. IoT is a big thing, but we're trying to do more than just make the next great product. We're trying to gather the data that's going to help us make business decisions, grow business, and use those smart devices for our business intelligence.

6:13: Mergers, Acquisitions, and Master Data Management
Mike: I've been with the company 5 years and [during that time] we have acquired 5 different companies. That gives us a major focus on things like master data management, where we've got to all be talking the same language.

9:47: B2B2C
Mike: We're so blind when it comes to selling our products through a distribution channel. So now in conjunction with our distributors, we are actually collecting data about the products that they sell to their customers. That data is so valuable. It's probably the number one thing that our executives are looking for.
15:16: How IoT is Driving Service and Product Development
Mike: We have a chemical monitoring system, a floating connected device. The consumers have an app where they can see what's going on and they can share that information with servicers. So servicers can see... "oh, you're having problems. Maybe I should come out and help you."
The other thing we do is we sell chemicals in what you would think of as pods, like Tide pods. They're color-coded. So your connected device tells you, "Oh, you've got an issue. Please drop in 2 blue, 3 green and a red into your pool." So, we're connecting on the service side, and we're connecting on the consumable side.
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Previous Episode

Supply Chain 360: Data and Analytics Powering Modern Logistics with James Lumb

On this episode of Data in Depth, we dig into how sophisticated data and analytics are transforming logistics and changing the way companies manage their supply chains. We talk with James Lumb, CEO of Zenkraft, who offers cutting-edge examples of how logistics data can be used to avoid waste, improve customer experience, and even improve your product line.
Chapter markers:
4:48 - Supply Chain 360
6:05 - Internet of Things
6:54 - Product Improvement Feedback Loops
8:55 - The Power of Data Integration
9:57 - 10x ROI
12:03 - Customer Engagement Opportunities
13:10 - Artificial Intelligence and Data Sharing in Logistics
14:01 - Quoting Shipments in CPQ
15:34 - Win a Pair of Bose Headphones
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Next Episode

5 Ways AI and Machine Learning are Changing the Face of Manufacturing with Louis Columbus

In this episode, we talk with Louis Columbus, a Forbes columnist and principal at IQMS. Louis talks through five ways artificial intelligence and machine learning are revolutionizing the manufacturing industry — from marketing and sales to efficiency, from addressing the talent gap to ensuring quality, safety and security.

13:24 - Labor Challenges

I visit a lot of manufacturers. I visit probably five to 10 manufacturers a month, and I periodically do surveys every quarter as part of my role at Dassault IQMS. We did a survey and we asked what are the top impediments to your growth in 2019, and we asked them in April. We asked 150 North American discrete manufacturers in the mid tier of the market, and number one at 67% was we don't have enough people. Labor is incredibly challenging right now for the mid tier, the American manufacturing or the North American manufacturing.

19:21 - Zero Trust Security

Zero trust security by definition is always verify, never trust approach to every security perimeter on a manufacturing location, and what zero trust security does is it verifies every device and it treats every device and every identity as a new part of the security perimeter. And so with the growth more and more of real time monitoring of machinery and every various threats or if it's that a manufacturer has being exposed, it's really critical to be able to protect it down to that specific device level.

22:38 - AI and Machine Learning Impacts on Safety

Now what's really fascinating when you go and walk shop floors and you meet manufacturers who have invested anywhere from five to 10 million dollars in new smart connected machinery. That machinery's got all kinds of safeguards in it. But more importantly, those machines have the ability to heal themselves, but also have their own innate operating systems. And how this all relates to safety is they will tell you if they are getting to a heat point or to a point with their own metrics of like, hey, this may get borderline unsafe in this environment, so therefore I'm gonna shut myself off. Or, therefore I'm gonna send you an alert to the quality manager. Safety is much more sophisticated than many opponents of AI and machine learning and manufacturing give it credit for, much, much more sophisticated.

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