The Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions
Association (MESA.org) and LNS
Research recently released their biannual
“Analytics That Matter” survey results,
titled “Driving Real Results with Industrial
Analytics.” It is full of insights into the value
and advantages gained by industry leaders
from investing in analytics technologies and
implementation recommended approaches. The
report from MESA and LNS shows that leaders
in applying analytics are significantly outpacing
followers with their ability to make better decisions
faster and with greater agility.
If your organization is hesitating to make
investments in improving manufacturing
analytics, the results of the MESA and LNS
research highlight the value to be gained from
these technologies.
Survey respondents noted that the top three
drivers of their investment in analytics were
reducing costs, improving profitability, and risk
management. These are issues in which finance
should be providing advice and guidance.
Companies identified in the survey as analytics
leaders focused on pushing the benefits
of the analytics “down the organization” to
empower production workers and supervisors
to become more efficient and effective on the
factory floor and make data empowered decisions
that improve quality and reduce costs.
“Leaders” in the use of analytics were almost
300% more likely than followers to build fully
integrated teams of data scientists and manufacturing
personnel to identify problems and
arrive at solutions. Analytics “followers,” on the
other hand, typically maintained separate organizations
for data scientists and manufacturing
personnel. Leaders also provide data analytics
training widely across the organization to “build
an army of citizen data scientists” capable of
improving operations and using decision support
information more effectively.
Interestingly, leading companies did not have
manufacturing teams leading their analytics initiatives.
Instead, they want their manufacturing personnel
focused on getting product out the door.
Manufacturing team members were actively
engaged in these analytics initiatives, but support
functions such as quality, safety, and
maintenance were the ones leading the projects.
Followers tended to have plant managers,
manufacturing/operations, or operations technology
teams responsible for leading analytics
initiatives, which tends to slow the progress of
analytics initiatives.
While data quality and technology issues
were the most frequently listed as causing
problems for analytics initiatives, the bigger
issue was “gathering buy-in from operations,
business, and plant level personnel” closest to
a root cause. The study showed that analytics
leaders looked at their initiatives as people,
process, and technology challenges and applied
equal resources and effort to support each of
the three dimensions.
What finance can do
Manufacturing finance staffs can facilitate and
help create the organizational will and capability
needed to make the investments in analytics
and modernization. Finance needs to serve
as a business partner with manufacturing, IT,
and value support functions to rapidly identify
and quantify the business benefits that can
be gained. Analytics benefits can range from
improving the ability to track small changes
on the factory floor to providing insights to
reconfigure customer, production, or logistics
processes for greater efficiency and customer
satisfaction. All of which can result in significant
financial gains for the business.
Finance can also help make new improvement
projects more understandable to senior
organizational leadership, allowing project leadership
to focus on innovation, implementation,
and achieving results rather than continuously
justifying and re-justifying their expenses,
funding needs, and proving the benefits they
are creating.
