The Journey to a Digital Factory Part II

Data, Data, Data Everywhere

In the first paper of this series, we covered the many different aspects of a digital factory and various challenges of issues associated with the process. In the second paper, we delve into more detail regarding the process of aggregating the data and covering the basics of what it takes to get a good dashboarding system in place.

In many cases, we find users with data from a number of different systems, some of which is not accessible in real-time to the end user. Even when available, the user may spend a block of time each day accessing the systems, perhaps compiling data, and reformatting it to make sense for their particular purposes. Unfortunately, when implementing a digital factory, this step of making it useful to the end user is not an easy question to answer. In practice, many obstacles are often encountered when a group attempts to construct a dashboard; including disparate sources of information, incompatible information, non-intuitive methods and practices of data management and metric generation, and the inability to immediately process information and/or improve its representation. Operators, Engineers, Management, and Consultants all have a view of what they want to see, which can lead to data that ends up disconnected from the particular user. This paper provides helpful details on the steps to keep on an efficient path toward first a dashboard and then eventually a digital factory.