Delivering optimal real-time manufacturing intelligence

IT Services can now deliver optimal Real-Time Manufacturing Intelligence (“MI”). Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”) has been implemented for years, providing supply chain and business improvement intelligence. Real-Time MI has the opportunity for rapid ROI with enhanced yields, less downtime, and less waste. Much research has shown that people are poor at determining correlations subjectively. Most industry experts only trust computer calculated correlations using statistical models. MI is a concept in the world of process manufacturing - unique for analytically alarming process trends to prevent out of control product problems. Chemical, packaging, pharmaceutical and energy companies have long known that automating data collection and data analysis can lead to improving processes and yields. These companies have developed massive databases that collect detailed measurements from factory automation tools which are used later for off-line analysis. The key to today´s MI improvement is to use new IT capabilities to leverage these existing, disparate database silos; provide real-time analysis and intelligence; and identify and correct problems in-line. This can be done without creating, duplicating or installing yet another database. This paper looks at MI and case studies in chemical, pharmaceutical, and packaging process manufacturing and compares the major companies providing software options.