Thursday, July 30, 2015

Not All of Big-Data Is Hype -- Self-Service BI with Data Analytics Can Yield Quick Results for Manufacturing

Rapid Insights and Operational Intelligence for the shop-floor

By Gopal GopalKrishnan, P.E., Solution Architect, Partners and Strategic Alliances, OSIsoft, LLC. Member, MESA International Technical and Education Committee 

Not all big-data is hype. Self-service BI with its slice and dice user experience came along just as big-data was gaining mindshare.  And, when targeted to specific use cases, self-service BI with data analytics can yield rapid insights – big data or not.

This is Part 2 of a blog post series describing the use of self-service BI and data analytics from real-life scenarios in MOM (manufacturing operations management).  This use case comes from one of Georgia Pacific’s (GP) paper machine operation.  

To read Part 1 click here: http://blog.mesa.org/2015/02/what-if-expedia-showed-your.html#links.

If you are not familiar with how paper is made, please see this interactive video tour. The data and analysis described below is for the “Papermaking” step in the video tour.  Here, several chemicals are added to the feed stock to influence its properties such as whiteness, strength, and others.  

Friday, July 24, 2015

Antifragility and Plant Floor Systems

 By Patrick Weber, MESA International Technical and Education Committee member

Few words strike fear in manufacturing operations executives as do “enterprise system software upgrade”.  Once uttered, there is an almost instantaneous demand to IT for assurances that all existing processes will still function after the upgrade has been completed.  In many cases, the existing platform has been customized, tweaked, interfaced, and personalized beyond anyone’s ability to fully know.  Clearly, the current state of enterprise-level systems is “fragile”.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Is Your Businesses a Leader in MES/MOM? Now You Can Prove It.

By Marc Leroux, Chairman of MESA's Education Committee, International Board Member, and Americas Board Member

MESA has just launched a new, two part recognition program. The first part is geared towards individual practitioners, the second is for organizations. In a previous post I talked about the individual recognition program for practitioners, in this post I’ll talk about the  MESA Recognized Business program.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

3 Requirements Prove MES/MOM Professionals Are Ready For Any Project

By Marc Leroux, Chairman of MESA's Education Committee, International Board Member, and Americas Board Member

MESA has just launched a new, two part recognition program. The first part is geared towards individual practitioners, the second is for organizations. In this post I’ll talk about the MESA Recognized Practitioner program.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Are Your MES/MOM Skills Recognized?

 By Patrick Weber, MESA International Technical and Education Committee member

Plant floor systems used to be simpler things: relay-driven machine logic, counters and gauges that human operators could read and record values on their clipboards, control panels with numerous indicator lights showing what was happening at any given time.  But automation has evolved from those roots: industrial controllers have replaced relays, graphical HMIs with touch screens have replaced the lighted panels, and networks now exchange information between production equipment and enterprise systems – eliminating the need for a human with a clipboard, but also enabling new capabilities throughout the entire value chain.  This evolution has led to the development of a new body of knowledge, often referred to as Manufacturing Operations Management, or MOM. Many of today’s industry initiatives – such as “smart manufacturing”, “digital thread”, “real-time enterprise”, “connected enterprise”, and “Industrie 4.0” – are deeply rooted in MOM.