In a few weeks, Seeq VP/CMO Michael Risse and Michelle Hart, Seeq principal analytics engineer, share their expertise during the Smart Industry webinar “Installed in the Morning, A Million Dollar Benefit in the Afternoon: New Advanced Analytics for your Machine Data.”
Today Michael provides a preview, touching on the data/dollars dynamic and easy wins with analytics. Take a look…
Smart Industry: What is the secret to connecting analytics to profits?
Michael: Analytics have been tied to profits for decades…maybe forever. For example,
actionable insights was an industry aspiration long before big data or IIoT. The question is what’s different now from so many years of aspiring to do better with analytics, to compete on analytics, to be a data-driven company. You’ve got the data. You’ve got the expertise. What’s missing? The answer is a new approach called advanced analytics, which bridges you and your expertise with innovation in computer science to accelerate—by an order of magnitude—the time to decisions and actions.
Smart Industry: Is order of magnitude another marketing promise for what advanced analytics can accomplish?
Michael: No, it’s an understatement. I know my audience. Turning 40 hours into one hour is an example, or in some cases 400 hours into one hour. Even more important, there are also the analyses that were never even attempted because they took too long or were too daunting to complete. Those we can’t even quantify in terms of time savings and impact because they just weren’t done before.
Also, if we think about our experiences as consumers with Google, Uber and Alexa, the idea that there are radical changes possible through innovation and computer science should not be a surprise. What if that type of transformative software experience could be brought to engineers and subject-matter experts in plants and facilities?
Michael: That depends on you. The good thing is with this new generation of advanced-analytics applications you are the person making that decision. You don’t have to go to the IT department or a consultant or a specialist; the person looking for insights is the one driving the analysis of whatever type—diagnostic, past, descriptive, reporting, predictive, etc.
Smart Industry: What is the value in data cleansing?
Michael: Data cleansing is important because it’s a key part of analytics process. Get to the data, get the right data—when the plant was operating, when the asset was in startup, when it was a certain ambient temperature and making a certain product, etc. It’s also important to get the data clean so you’re not introducing errors. Data-science rules still apply in the advanced-analytics world—junk in, junk out is the polite phasing of the rule.
Smart Industry: How do you differentiate advanced analytics from more modest efforts?
Michael: The analysts that cover advanced analytics—like McKinsey and Gartner and ARC—differentiate advanced analytics because it is enabled by innovations such as big data, machine learning, and advanced algorithms. So there is no question if machine learning or big data plays a role in advanced analytics. It’s a question of how those innovations are leveraged. The key for plant-based analytics and improvements in profits and outcomes is to get those innovations in the hands of users as features and functionality in applications they can use.
