Case study for how our technical consultant helped a UK manufacturer improve the visibility on their production data, and how the Internet of Things (IoT) was used to source the data directly from manufacturing plant machinery.

The Problem

A manufacturer of heating products wanted an improved visibility on their manufacturing facility in the UK. Their particular areas of interest being the number of items being manufactured in each area of production, whether the KPI’s are being met, and First Time Good data at each production stage. There were two important caveats. That data should be captured with minimal human interaction, and that the information should be delivered in real-time and provisioned in the factory and to management, in the form of easy-to-understand analytics.

The Solution

As a Technical Business Analyst, my first milestone was to talk over the problem with stakeholders and then to visit the factory and talk with the machine operators. To ascertain the As-Is process flow, and to also find out what pain-points the operators might be experiencing. With user stories and As-Is BPMN documented, along with a potential To-Be process flow presented to stakeholders, it was time to write the technical specification as to how a potential solution could be delivered.

Firstly, the data had to be captured directly from the manufacturing machines, bypassing any operator interaction. The data to be stored in a relational database so that the valuable manufacturing data was available in real-time, albeit on a secure server in the cloud. Data in hand, it was time to structure the data, write the supporting and agreed formulae, and make the data available through a new web service API tier.

Two of the required data outputs specified by the stakeholders was for the provision of data in the factory and to management. My technical specification provisioned large-screen displays in each of the production areas, giving operational staff real-time KPI-related information on their (and other) production area(s). And to also provision information to management and senior management in the form of dashboard analytics, delivered using Microsoft Power BI.

The solution was approved and implemented, giving a much improved visibility on production, both operationally and at management level., and with no delays in the delivery of the data. Meaning any problems in the manufacture pipeline could be identified earlier and resolved much quicker. A revised To-Be business process meant that a lot of the operator pain-points were resolved. And a standard web service API tier meant that the same formulas and data methods were used across the whole company, meaning that people could see analytics in a dashboard format of their choosing, but importantly, the information being provisioned was based around the same data methods and formulas. Bringing reliable information consistency across the entire organisation, both in the UK and in overseas operations.

To learn more about our services around the Internet of Things, take a look at https://wowbangboom.com/consulting/internet-of-things