At any given time, manufacturers have loads of information from many different sources available to them. However, information being available and information being accessible aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Problems with connectivity, visibility and asset health have long been major issues for manufacturers. Approximately 75% of manufacturing leaders report a lack of Industry 4.0-ready equipment, 90% don’t have connected workspaces and 75% lack design-to-market visibility.
A lack of information isn’t the problem for today’s manufacturers. The problem is not having the means to effectively manage and leverage the information.
Cognitive manufacturing taps into data aggregation and analysis and creates a connected ecosystem that makes it easier to gain new insights from information that already exists. One key benefit of cognitive manufacturing technology is that it can help improve knowledge management by organizing and orchestrating data from all available sources, both structured and unstructured, internal and external. This may include information from IoT sensors, enterprise systems, biometric sensors, inspection cameras and technical manuals.
Leveraging such timely and relevant information from so many sources makes it possible for cognitive technologies to function more effectively and in ways that drive measurable business value. For example, predictive maintenance can be enhanced by combining information from manuals, historical data and real-time data sources like IoT sensors that provide visibility into asset health and ensure the technology functions properly. That extra information can enable systems to continue learning and improve performance over time.
Cognitive technologies may also be able to provide new insights that would be difficult, if not impossible, to discover through manual analysis.
Factoring in additional sources of data and enabling risk management capabilities could help cognitive manufacturing technologies learn to detect warning signs of impending equipment failure or other potential disruptions earlier than previously possible. This would give you more time to react and either minimize the impact or fully avoid the disruption.
When preparing to implement cognitive manufacturing solutions, it’s important to think about which data sources would provide the most value to help you get the results you need.
Bristlecone offers both digital consulting services and cognitive manufacturing solutions to help you create faster and smarter design-to-production processes, accelerate time to market and extend high-value asset life. Contact us today to get started.
