Eleviant is to Elevate & Scale. Eleviant Tech symbolizes business transformation and reinforces our mission to help clients elevate and scale their business.
Manufacturing industries are flooded with data from various sources, including IoT devices, PLCs, ERP systems, etc. This data holds immense potential to drive efficiency, quality, and innovation. Yet, extracting meaningful insights from this data deluge can take time and effort. Common challenges faced by manufacturers include:
- Data Silos: Data is often fragmented across various systems, hindering analysis.
- Data Quality Issues: Inconsistent data formats, missing values, and inaccuracies can compromise the reliability of insights.
- Real-time Insights: There is a need for timely insights to respond to dynamic market conditions and production challenges.
- Complex Data Pipelines: Building and maintaining complex data pipelines can be time-consuming and resource intensive.
Microsoft Fabric is an extensive data platform that combines data warehousing, data lake, data engineering, and data analytics capabilities into a unified solution. Imagine you have a vast ocean of data. Microsoft Fabric is like a powerful fishing net that helps you catch the most valuable insights from that ocean. It’s a platform that combines different tools for storing, managing, and analyzing data.
It’s real-time engineering capabilities, powered by KQL, enable manufacturers to process and analyze data in real-time. This empowers businesses to make timely decisions, respond to dynamic market conditions, and optimize production processes. With its robust business intelligence features, Microsoft Fabric helps organizations extract meaningful insights from data, create interactive dashboards, and empower business users to make informed decisions.
Key Manufacturing Data Processed by Microsoft Fabric
- Production Data: Production rates, yield rates, and downtime information.
- Quality Control Data: Defect rates, quality control test results, and customer feedback.
- Inventory Data: Inventory levels, stockouts, and lead times.
- Supply Chain Data: Supplier performance, logistics data, and transportation costs.
- Energy Consumption Data: Energy usage patterns and costs.
- Workforce Data: Employee performance, attendance, and training records.
- Predictive Maintenance Data: Machine failure patterns, and service history for proactive maintenance.
- Customer Demand Data: Forecasts, sales trends, and order volumes to align production planning.
Here are some key features of Fabric:
Data Analysis:
- Data Integration: Easily integrates data from various sources, including databases, files, and cloud services.
- Data Transformation: Cleans, transforms, and prepares data for analysis using SQL, Python, and other languages.
- Data Warehousing and Data Lake: Provides a unified platform for storing and managing large datasets.
- Advanced Analytics: Offers powerful tools for statistical analysis, machine learning, and predictive modeling, with real-time analytics capabilities to ingest, process, and analyze data as it streams in.
- Data Governance: Ensures real-time data governance by tracking lineage, securing access, and ensuring compliance with Microsoft Purview.
Data Visualization:
- Interactive Dashboards: Creates visually appealing and interactive dashboards to present insights to stakeholders.
- Customizable Visualizations: Offers a wide range of visualization options, including charts, graphs, and maps.
- Natural Language Queries: Enables users to ask questions in simple language and get instant results.
- Mobile Access: Provides mobile-friendly dashboards for accessing insights on the go.
- Integration with Power BI: Integrates with Power BI for advanced visualization and reporting capabilities.
- Paginated Reports: Pixel-perfect reports for operational reporting.
- Embedded Analytics: Embeds insights into applications.
Overcoming Manufacturing Challenges with Microsoft Fabric
Production lines face a number of challenges that can significantly impact efficiency, quality, and profitability. From fluctuating demand to supply chain disruptions and technological advancements, manufacturers must constantly adapt and optimize their operations to stay ahead. Here are some key challenges that Microsoft Fabric can address:
1. Boosting Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
- Predictive maintenance: Uses AI and machine learning to predict equipment failures based on sensor data and historical performance. This enables proactive maintenance scheduling, reducing unplanned downtime and extending equipment lifespan.
- Real-time monitoring: Uses real-time monitoring systems to track equipment performance and identify anomalies or deviations from expected behavior. This allows for immediate intervention and prevents issues from escalating.
- Optimized production schedules: Use data analytics to analyze historical production data, identify bottlenecks, and optimize production schedules to maximize throughput and minimize idle time. Consider factors such as demand fluctuations, equipment availability, and resource constraints.
- Energy efficiency: Analyze energy consumption data to identify opportunities for optimization and reduce energy costs.
- Process automation: Microsoft Fabric integrates with IoT and control systems to automate repetitive tasks, further improving operational efficiency and reducing human error.
- Resource allocation: Optimizes the allocation of human and machine resources to improve throughput during peak production cycles.
2. Scaling Digital Transformation
- Unified data platform: Creates a centralized data platform to consolidate data from various sources, including IoT devices, PLCs, and ERP systems. This enables a wholesome view of operations and facilitates data-driven decision-making.
- Phased implementation: Adopts a phased approach to digital transformation, starting with low-risk, high-value projects and gradually expanding the scope as benefits are realized.
- Cloud-based infrastructure: Uses cloud-based solutions to scale digital initiatives efficiently and cost-effectively. Cloud platforms offer flexibility, scalability, and reduced infrastructure costs.
- Integration with existing systems: Ensure integration of digital solutions with existing IT infrastructure to avoid disruption and maximize value.
- Advanced collaboration tools: Facilitates cross-departmental collaboration with shared dashboards, data models, and insights to align objectives.
3. Addressing Rising Costs of Labor and Regulatory Compliance
- Efficiency optimization: Use MS Fabric to identify inefficiencies and optimize processes, reducing waste and improving overall productivity.
- Compliance tracking: Systems can track compliance with environmental regulations and identify potential risks.
- Supplier management: Use MS Fabric to evaluate supplier performance and identify cost-saving opportunities.
- Labor cost insights: Analyze workforce data to identify inefficiencies, automate processes, and reduce dependency on high-cost labor.
- Risk mitigation: Provides predictive analytics to anticipate potential compliance or labor-related risks before they occur.
4. Bridging the Legacy Gap
- Data integration: Integrates data from legacy systems into the modern data platform. This may involve using APIs, data connectors, or ETL/ELT processes.
- Modernization: Helps in gradually modernizing legacy systems as resources and budget allow.
- Data migration: Helps with data migration to ensure data integrity and minimizes disruption during the transition.
- Data quality assessment: Helps with assessment of the quality of data from legacy systems and used for data cleansing and standardization processes to improve data accuracy and reliability.
- Legacy system monitoring: Monitors legacy system performance and generates actionable insights for prioritizing modernization efforts.
- Hybrid solutions: Facilitates hybrid integrations where legacy systems and modern platforms coexist seamlessly during the transition phase.
Key benefits of data-driven insights in production lines include:
- Identifying inefficiencies: Data analysis can pinpoint areas where resources are being wasted, or processes are slowing down.
- Predictive maintenance: By analyzing equipment data, companies can predict failures and schedule maintenance proactively, reducing downtime and costs.
- Quality control: Data-driven insights can help identify defects and ensure that products meet quality standards.
- Demand forecasting: Accurate demand forecasting enables companies to optimize production schedules and avoid stockouts or excess inventory.
- Continuous improvement: Data analysis provides valuable insights for identifying areas for improvement and implementing changes to enhance overall efficiency.
- Real-time decision-making: Real-time analytics allow production managers to address issues immediately, minimizing disruptions.
Eleviant CTG’s successful implementation of Microsoft Fabric for Cellgate is a testament to the platform’s effectiveness in addressing real-world manufacturing challenges:
CellGate, a leading manufacturer of remote gate access control systems, partnered with Eleviant-CTG to gain valuable data insights. With a substantial amount of product usage data collected from various sources, including devices and customer portals, CellGate used Microsoft Fabric to develop a modern analytics platform.
Benefits:
- Optimized Network & Costs: Based on data from devices and carrier networks, CellGate reduced costs and improved network efficiency.
- Enhanced Customer Experience: Actionable recommendations for optimal device configurations improve customer satisfaction.
- Boosted Sales: Market trend analysis predicts inventory needs, leading to improved sales performance.
Ready to unlock the potential of Microsoft Fabric for your manufacturing operations?
