5 reasons why all manufacturing companies need to use big data

By Glen White
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Big data is helping the way the business world works and manufacturers are really beginning to take notice.If your manufacturing company needs to optimi...

Big data is helping the way the business world works and manufacturers are really beginning to take notice.

If your manufacturing company needs to optimize its data collecting practices, then big data might just be the answer.

With manufactured data management in mind, here are just a few ways your company can benefit from big data:

Smart manufacturing

Your manufacturing company processes, compiles, and manages massive sets of data day in and day out.

With big data, your company can put all of that information to good use and create a smarter manufacturing environment. Taking a big data approach all begins with information system tracking.

Manufacturing inherently uses automated machinery complete with actuators and sensors that are connected through a network.

Big data can track the processes of each and every sensor in your factory and allow the attached equipment to self-govern. This type of smart manufacturing creates an improved IT infrastructure.

Data collection

As mentioned earlier, the manufacturing world is highly automated, which means data transferring takes place across the entire factory floor. Depending on the size of your manufacturing facility, you could pull upwards of a terabyte of data each day.

Whether you process files from certain machinery or run test machines for accuracy, your data volume fluctuates regularly.

With big data, you can scale your data collecting up or down depending on manufacturing amounts from one week or month to the next.

Following finances

Balancing your manufacturing company's budget is a top priority and big data can help in the finance department too.

As the following article notes, when it comes to how big data is transforming the world of finance, it all boils down to risk analytics, which is something every company can benefit from.

A balanced budget mitigates financial risk and luckily big data can account for all of your company's expenses.

From tracking material costs to daily labor and energy costs and miscellaneous overhead costs, big data collects all of your company's expenditures and compiles them into a real-time budgeting log.

Tracking defects

Product defects not only slow production, they also cost your company tons of money when they go unnoticed on the assembly line.

Unfortunately, with manufacturing systems becoming increasingly independent and automated, defects oftentimes slip through the cracks.

Big data acts like a factory floor supervisor with the main goal of locating defects.

Because big data can collect and process data sets from sensors throughout your facility, it can quickly locate flaws and defects based on data inaccuracies. This gives your company the opportunity to solve the issue before it becomes a costly manufacturing mistake.

Analyzing and forecasting

From performance data to supply planning to product quality and output speeds, big data can analyze just about every part of your manufacturing practices.

With analyzing abilities like this, your company can better plan for future manufacturing processes.

In other words, with the help of big data analytics, your company can forecast its manufacturing output and exponentially increase its efficiency. 

If your manufacturing company needs some assistance in the information department, let big data help.

Adam Groff is a freelance writer and creator of content. He writes on a variety of topics including technology and data collecting.

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