Data as a Differentiator: The Manufacturer's Roadmap for Competing on Analytics with Skye Reymond

06/12/19 • 24 min

In our first ever episode, we talk with data scientist Skye Reymond. Skye lays the groundwork for our series focusing on how data and analytics are key competitive differentiators for manufacturing companies. Here are just a few highlights:

1:44: Start where you are
Skye: There’s a book that I reference when a company is assessing where they stand in their analytical strategy. It’s called ‘Competing on Analytics.’ It outlines 5 levels of maturity...

2:22: Stage 1: Analytically Impaired
Skye: This is when a company is flying blind, they’re very reactive, the systems might not be integrated, and their data is poor quality.

3:13: Stage 2: Localized Analytics
Skye: These companies collect transactional data, something like you would see in an ERP system. But it’s still very reactive.

5:58: Stage 3: Analytical Aspirations
Skye: These companies are making investments in the right talent and tools. They’re preparing to use analytics to improve a distinctive capability of their company. They have a roadmap to automation.

6:57: The Road Map
Skye: A really good place to start is in the area of your business that you believe is going to be your differentiator. So if you have a repair shop, maybe your differentiator is service. If you’re a logistics company, your differentiator is going to be speed of delivery...

8:19: Stage 4: An Analytical Company
Skye: This is an enterprise-wide analytical strategy that’s viewed as a company priority... They're often using more automated analytics and more advanced modeling techniques... things like artificial intelligence, time series forecasting...

9:30: Building A Data-Driven Culture
Skye: It really needs to start from the top down... The next step is to give the people who are doing the jobs day-to-day some ownership and input. These are the experts who can give you some of the most valuable insight as you’re figuring out your analytics strategy.

10:31: Stage 5: The Ultimate Level
Skye: This is [a company] using analytics as a key component in their competitive strategy...analytics are fully automated, completely integrated. Decisions organization-wide are data-driven. Analytics are the central theme to how the organization operates.

11:52: The Last Differentiator
Skye: Analytics are really going to be the last differentiator. Analytics are going to be the big advantage that makes companies win over others.

16:05: Descriptive, Predictive, and Prescriptive Analytics
Andrew: I like this concept because it helps you connect your analytical strategy toward tangible goals for your business and it really guides your thinking towards asking the right questions...
References:

2:22: Stage 1: Analytically Impaired
Skye: This is when a company is flying blind, they’re very reactive, the systems might not be integrated, and their data is poor quality.

3:13: Stage 2: Localized Analytics
Skye: These companies collect transactional data, something like you would see in an ERP system. But it’s still very reactive.

11:52: The Last Differentiator
Skye: Analytics are really going to be the last differentiator. Analytics are going to be the big advantage that makes companies win over others.

Next Episode

Integrations: A 360-degree view of the supply chain, the shop floor, and your customer with Shekar Hariharan

In this episode, we talk with Shekar Hariharan, VP of Product Marketing at Jitterbit. Shekar highlights the crucial role data integrations and APIs play in driving innovation, efficiency, and agility in the manufacturing sector.

2:57 - Digital Disruption
Shekar: Manufacturing, just like any other industry, is being impacted by digital disruption...there's data scattered across different systems, and... unless you connect these systems together, you have what you call data silos.

3:58 - The Matrix
Andrew: I have this mental image of disparate databases housing lots of data, machines on the shop floor streaming lots of data, suppliers in your supply chain both upstream and downstream... and it just seems like the scene from the Matrix where you see all this data just flowing everywhere and you don't really know how to make sense of it.

7:40 - Integration Use Cases
Shekar: So, let's break it down into the business goals of why a company would connect data. Streamlining product design and development could be one use case... a great example is retail, where a clothing that is in fashion today may not be six months from now. So, the way you handle that is to set up your systems to support agile manufacturing. So, a product is designed and that's pushed by the design team into production. The production team does a prototype. That goes into quality and testing and eventually into production and deployment, and then you get feedback from your customers on how they like it. That input comes from various channels like we talked about earlier... social, [and sales] and different data points. So just there, you have one use case where companies are trying to streamline their design and development through integration and how the data flows through different systems, from PLM to production, distribution, and back to the design team for continuous improvement.

11:04 - IoT
Andrew: I think that's a good segue into the Internet of Things, and the blending of machines and humans.

12:03 - Predictive Maintenance
Shekar: Yeah, absolutely. A great example would be a machine that is working 'round the clock because companies can’t afford downtime. And then, eventually, for you to do preventative maintenance, you need to know the cycle time, maybe other variables are of interest, like your temperature, your pressure... You need data to come in real time from these devices back to tracking systems so that way you can plan.

13:30 - Proactive Service
Andrew: This is also giving manufacturers more power to provide additional services and support to the end customer. So, getting more into the predictive aspect of the business so that they can proactively go out and service or support things before a customer even knows that they may be experiencing downtime.
14:40 - Industry 4.0 Starts with Integration
Shekar: At Jitterbit, we surveyed hundreds of manufacturers globally, and the insight we got is only about 1/3 have a cohesive strategy to implement Industry 4.0. At the end of the day, if you want to get more ROI, if you want to deliver great customer experiences, digitize your processes, be agile enough to respond to changing market needs... if you want to do all of that, you have to have a strategy in place. And that strategy starts with integration.

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