Moving at the Speed of YOUR Business

Want More Agility?  Start by Breaking Up Siloed Data & Empowering Users

In the late 90’s to early 2000’s UPS ran the marketing tagline “Moving at the speed of Business”.  To me, this line seems a bit ambiguous.  How fast does business run?  Do they all run at the same speed?  This is why I thought the actual tagline should have been “Moving at the Speed of Your Business”.  The “Your” conveys a sense of agility and adaptability.  It says, we are able to meet your needs no matter the speed of your business.  However, I am sure there is a marketing focus group who will tell me that is incorrect and that the original phrase was much better.

The truth is all businesses are different, and they are all moving at different speeds. Even within a single manufacturing facility we will see day to day variations on the speed of their business. This has never been truer than it is right now.  With companies facing rising cost of goods, supply shortages, labor shortages, and shipping delays, to name a few, it is increasingly difficult to create a steady state production environment.

To combat these ever-changing variables, companies must adopt more agile environments to meet the needs of their customers.  The adoption of agile technologies can seem like a daunting task for a lot of companies.  What can we implement to help?  When can we schedule downtime to upgrade systems?  Where do we start?  These are the types of questions that can cause stagnation in a company as they try to find the perfect overall solution out of the gate rather than progressing in small increments toward modernizing their manufacturing systems.

One way to drive agility in your business is by breaking data silos.  Acquiring data from siloed platforms is time consuming and inefficient, costing money and increasing time to action.  By centralizing data, your team can quickly access the information they need to drive improvements and carry out critical functions.  The good news is that new solutions for increasing agility and breaking data silos in your business come in varying sizes and styles and are easier than ever to implement.  Many solutions can be implemented alongside existing systems which can ease deployment and transitions.

Let’s look at three ways InSource is helping businesses achieve more agility by breaking siloed data and empowering end users.

Unified Operations Center (UOC) in Action

Based on a “Systems of Systems” approach, AVEVA’s Unified Operations Center converges both process and non-process information sources from HMI/SCADA, analytics, cameras, GIS maps, ERP systems, engineering diagrams and more.  In simple terms, this is a data unifying platform.  Think of the Notification Center on your iPhone.  Sure, you could open the mail app and the message app and so on; but it is much easier to consume all that information when it is consolidated and presented in one place.  With out-of-the-box industry solution templates, reports, dashboards, and operational KPIs unifying your functional teams, departments and sites, seamlessly, under one platform, Unified Operations Center enables faster time to value.

3D Laser Scanning and Point Cloud Management

Using laser scanning technology, a digital twin of your facility can be created, allowing you to view real time maintenance, spare part inventory, P&ID and various other forms of data at the equipment level.  Utilizing Point Cloud Management from AVEVA you can access a reliable digital asset without having to physically visit the site.  Create pin-point accurate deliverables by integrating as-built data into 2D drawings and 3D models. Your business can save time, cut costs and reduce risk with minimized rework, less site visits and higher accuracy.

Model Driven MES + PlanetTogether Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS)

AVEVA’s work process-centric and Model-Driven approach to MES (manufacturing execution system) reduces the time to value and cost of ownership of solution deployments and multi-site roll outs.  Through the digital transformation of operational processes and standardization within plants and across sites, businesses can increase agility and reduce time to adopt change.  This will lead to continuous operational efficiency improvements and the return on MES investments.

With PlanetTogether users can start with manual scheduling or capture production constraints and policies in the system to automate the schedule generation process. Once you have the data you need, you can create schedules in seconds not hours. This frees your planners to use their experience to improve the business and make the tough decisions that only humans can make.  Planners can override resource assignments, sequences and priorities if needed, achieving the perfect balance between automation and expert control.

When paired together, AVEVA MES and PlanetTogether provide users with a complete Automation driven facility that aligns siloed data sets and maximizes agility.

Always Faster

So, how fast does YOUR business need to run?  Only you can answer, but we can help.  To achieve more production speed and agility, I encourage you to evaluate these 3 approaches. They work. The clock is ticking.