Improving Manufacturing and Operations Efficiency through a Governed Insights Center

Background

IoT technology is extremely beneficial in getting deeper insights into complex operational systems such as manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, etc. However, it is also important to have a single source of truth (SSOT) for all the data that gets generated through the various embedded systems to be able to derive the right insights and take data-driven decisions.

Our client, a global pharma behemoth, was in need to improve performance across the entire manufacturing value chain for various operations such as freight control, shop floor analytics, economic order quantity (EOQ), quality governance, inventory insights, and end-to-end transparency.

The Need

The client’s TechOps team planned to build an “Insights Center” that could enhance the overall digital ecosystem and generate reliable insights in real-time to optimize processes across the value chain. The backbone to this Insights Center was to build a single source of truth (SSOT) for all the data that was getting generated from various touch-points across the chain, including those connected by IoT.

The Solution

Altimetrik team of practitioners went deep into the end-to-end process, looking into their existing data lake and the data governance architecture that led to full transparency, automation, and predictive analytics. Data was sourced from multiple sources and platforms such as Inet, SAP and others.

We partnered with the client’s technical operations teams to co-create a platform that became the single source of information to derive data-driven decisions across the end-to-end manufacturing processes.

The platform was divided into two main categories:

Supply chain – this category includes:

1. EOQ

This tool helps to take data-driven decisions on Minimum Supply Order Quantities.

2. Inventory Insights

The one-stop shop for in-depth view of inventory data to enable decision making process for optimizing inventory.

3. Freight Optimizer

To give a view of advanced analytics and enable key decision making for continuous optimization in global warehousing & transportation/distribution.

Manufacturing & Quality – including Onsite, Shopfloor Edge Analytics and QaNTONxt

1. Onsite

To give a detailed view of manufacturing sites with advanced analytics for real-time decision make. It also manages tier meetings digitally.

2. Shopfloor Edge Analytics

Connects manufacturing site equipment with IoT solutions and empowers the site with real-time analytics.

3. Quality Analytics

Provides real-time analytics to monitor quality with complete overview of respective site and country.

A third category was created for Enabler Products including:

1. Digital Ecosystem

A monitoring tool for all digital products that helps to create & constantly improve the technology platforms.

2. Data Enablement

To consolidate all data in a cloud enterprise platform aligned with the overall technologyoperations data strategy and endorsed long-term architecture.

3. Data Governance and Quality

To analyze and improve the SSOT data quality with dedicated tools and ensure data governance.

Outcomes

With the SSOT in place, the Insights Center was able to help the client gain end-to-end visibility and insights based on data they could trust. Some of the key outcomes include:

Freight Optimization

Full visibility on all lanes and volumes for air, sea and road transportation at SKU level.

Data to help procurement based on current and foreseeable needs.

Energy Optimization

Analyzing data in real time from the IoT connectivity at the shop floor across multiple scenarios helped in deciphering energy usage at a granular level.

Automation

Automated data flows removing Excel/PPT & manual dependencies.

Automated collation of multi-sourced batch information leading to improved efficiency across the value chain.

Predictive Analytics

In depth analytics on financial, operational, and sustainable KPIs that could facilitate key decision-making to increase COGS and serve as the foundation for ongoing development.