THE

JOURNEY
The Manufacturing Analytics Journey

BY BILL BITHER, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF MACHINEME TRICS

AND GR AHAM IMMERMAN, VP OF MARKE TING, MACHINEME TRICS
T H E M A N U FA C T U R I N G A N A LY T I C S J O U R N E Y

Contents

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PA R T O N E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 3
The Manufacturing Analytics Journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 03
What Is Manufacturing Analytics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 03
What Are The Advantages of Leveraging Manufacturing Analytics? . . . 04

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PA R T T W O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 05
From Descriptive to Prescriptive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 05
Descriptive Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 06
Diagnostic Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 08
Preventative Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 09
Prescriptive Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

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PA R T T H R E E   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
How Data on Production and Quality Combine to Create Useful Analytics 11
Going from descriptive to predictive analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
T H E M A N U FA C T U R I N G A N A LY T I C S J O U R N E Y
Part One
T H E M A N U FA C T U R IN G
A N A LY T I C S J O U R N E Y
In the past, if you wanted to know how a machine
was performing on a shop floor, you would have
had to put pencil to paper and note the throughput,
the error rate, the quality, all manually. You would
have to look at the quality of the inputs and the
available supply of the raw materials. You would
have had to look at the throughput over time to see
if there was a consistency to quality or errors that
needed to be investigated.
In other words, you were looking at potentially
weeks of manual effort to figure out why and how a
manufacturing process was going awry. That, in and
of itself, isn’t a good use of anyone’s time and is a
pretty inefficient way to become more profitable.
Then came Industrial IoT (IIoT) and the ability to
monitor machines directly, providing quantities
of data from the machine, as well as the operator,
that can be analyzed in order to improve both
production and quality. According to research, IIoT
has the ability to push the manufacturing industry’s
productivity rate and generate approximately $1.2
trillion for manufacturers worldwide.
W H AT I S M A N U FA C T U R IN G
A N A LY T I C S?
Analytics is essentially the collection and
manipulation of large quantities of data to reveal
insights. In manufacturing, the large quantities of
data collected come from production equipment,
logistics and supply chain management, and shop
floor operators. These data from different sources
and processes are collected and reformatted as
easy to understand metrics, to reveal where there
are issues with performance or output quality.
Thus, manufacturing analytics goes beyond
the actual collection of the data to include the
formulation of insights that can be used at every
level of the organization. The advancement of tools
and software in this area means that the process of
collecting data is no longer manual and the analysis
is centrally available, in real-time. This ensures
analytical insight is available for everyone from the
shop floor manager to the CEO to review and, most
importantly, take action on.
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WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGE S OF LE VER AGING MANUFACTURING ANALY TICS?
“Increased revenue (33.1%),
increased customer satisfaction
(22.1%) and increased product
quality (11%) are the top three
benefits of Industrial Analytics.”
THERE ARE MANY ADVANTAGE S TO LE VER AGING RE AL-TIME ANALY TICS:
Customer satisfaction
The ability to discover performance and / or quality
control issues in every individual order before they
become problematic, leads to better customer
satisfaction.
Availability of real-time data
Rather than waiting for a problem, the availability
of real-time data that is formatted into metrics and
insights constructed for specific users, a problem
with a machine can be proactively discovered, even
predicted based on historical data and current
usage.
Reduction in errors
Tracking the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF),
leads to an optimized manufacturing process. With
MTBF, errors that may cause items to be scrapped
will be detected early. Early detection means less
expenses for the manufacturer.
(Source)
Reduction in unplanned downtime
The real-time data also allows operators to get
an immediate view of the performance of any given
machine; a minute lag in production or issues that
may affect quality can be picked up in real-time.
This ensures the needed maintenance or repairs
can be scheduled to forestall further damage to
machines. Thus, instead of operators existing in
reactive mode, they’ll be able to be proactive in
handling the maintenance of machines. Eventually,
with the application of artificial intelligence to
machine data and data analytics, AI will enable
machines to fix themselves without human
supervision.
Reducing manufacturing costs
A data-driven manufacturing process optimizes
machine utilization, enables predictive
maintenance, and improves overall production
efficiency levels. The reduction in scraps, downtime,
and maximizing operator schedules lead to huge
recurrent savings for manufacturers.  
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Part Two
DESCRIPTIVE DIAGNOSTIC
What is happening? Why is it happening?
T H E M A N U FACT U R I N G A N A LY T I C S J O U R N E Y
F R O M D E S C R I P T I V E TO P R E S C R I P T I V E
• Descriptive Analytics, which use data
aggregation and data mining to provide insight
into the past. Descriptive analytics answers the
question; “What has happened in the past” and
“What is happening now”
• Diagnostic Analytics: Diagnostic analytics
attempts to understand and answer the
question, “Why it happened?”
PREDICTIVE PRESCRIPTIVE
What is likely to happen? What should I do about it?
• Predictive Analytics, which use statistical
models and forecasts techniques to understand
the future. Predictive analysis answers the
question; “What could happen?”
• Prescriptive Analytics, which use optimization
and simulation algorithms to advise on possible
outcomes. Predictive asks the question “What
should we do?”
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MachineMetrics Operator View allows operators to add human-
context to machine data with a touch screen interface mounted
right at the machine tool. Categorize downtime, reject a part,
and start/stop jobs to manage and record quality data.
D E S C R I P T I V E A N A LY T I C S
Descriptive analytics is the interpretation of historical
data to understand the performance and changes
that have occurred in a business. If you want to know
what happened, use descriptive analytics and until
recently, this is how most companies used data—to
see what had happened in the past.
Descriptive analytics provides insight into the past
and showcases the effects of the decisions that were
taken. The analytics can be customized to fit any
time frame or set of customers. If you want to know
what has happened in the last 30 days or year with
only a certain demographic of customers, descriptive
analytics can get you accurate answers.
In customer experience, descriptive analytics can be
used to track things like total tickets and resolutions.
They can be especially helpful in tracking trends to
help plan for the future. If the number of customer
calls increased greatly around the holidays or
when a new product launched, you can plan for
increased call volume around those events in the
future. Descriptive analytics can also help provide a
better understanding of customers by tracking their
shopping and contacting preferences.
D E S C R I P T I V E A N A LY T I C S U S E
CA S E S FO R M A N U FACT U R I N G
In manufacturing, descriptive analytics has multiple
use cases. These cases include; evaluating past
production cycles, providing benchmark data,
optimizing machine performance, and developing a
foundation for diagnostic and predictive analytics.
To understand these use cases, the example of a
machine shop producing metal components paints
a clearer picture. In this scenario, the machine shop
collected machine and production data through the
first quarter of 2019 and intends to use the data for
descriptive analytics. With the collected data, the
machine shop successfully:
• Evaluated 2019’s Productivity Levels
With descriptive analytics, the machine shop
was able to highlight which month was the most
productive and what made it so. It could also track
downtime and the causes from the historical data.
• Benchmark Data
The collected data and the evaluation done
provides benchmark data highlighting the most
productive cycle through the months and why
productivity was optimized.
• Develop a Foundation for Predictive Analytics
To effectively plan for the future, knowledge of the
past is required. The benchmark data descriptive
analytics provide will be used by the machine shop
to estimate machine production capacity, the
effects of increased demand and downtime etc.
Descriptive analytics then puts the machine shop in
a better position to plan for optimized productivity
throughout 2020. It also provides manufacturers
with insight into the important data that was
overlooked so solutions can be put in place to
capture them in the future.
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T H E I M P O RTA N C E O F B E N C H M A R K DATA FO R D E S C R I P T I V E A N A LY T I C S
No manufacturing service or operation exists in a data against the benchmark for your machine to
vacuum. Today, the manufacturing industry happens determine or discover production shortfalls.
to be one of the most competitive industries out
there. Thus, to compete manufacturers routinely Using benchmark data as a descriptive analytics tool,
compare their productivity metrics with those of the manufacturers can answer questions such as: What
competition. do we do to optimize machine performance to meet
industry standards? What are we doing wrong that
Benchmark data refers to the optimized industry- makes us lag behind the competition?
wide data of a machine needed for these
comparisons. Thus, with benchmark data, you
can evaluate both current and older machine

U T I L I Z AT I O N H E AT M A P, A L L C O M PA N I E S

Source: The ‘2019 State Of The Industry CNC Machining’ report, MachineMetrics.

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D I AG N O S T I C A N A LY T I C S
Diagnostic analytics involves the analysis of
historical data and real-time data with the aim of
answering the question ‘Why did this happen and
why is it happening’. In contrast to descriptive
analytics, diagnostic analytics is less focused
on what has occurred but rather focused on why
something happened. In general, this analytical
process involves looking at the processes and
causes, instead of the result. Here is an example
of diagnostic analytics “A machine is working
View and export real-time machine data and alarms as time-
optimally for longer durations and the likely reason series data and charts to help diagnose and resolve problems.
is due to the fluid change and servicing activities
that were done a week ago.”

Thus, diagnostic analytics show that the fluid
change is why the machine is functioning optimally.
On the other hand, descriptive analytics will
record that timely fluid changes lead to increased
performance. Also, take note that descriptive
analytics cannot provide an answer to important
questions such as “How can we avoid this problem”
or “How can we duplicate this solution?” These are
covered by diagnostic analytics.
D I A G N O S T I C A N A LY T I C S U S E
C A S E S F O R M A N U FA C T U R IN G
The manufacturing industry relies heavily on
diagnostic analytics to ensure production cycles
are efficiently run. The application of diagnostic
analytics covers asset maintenance, dealing with
downtime, and also providing a foundation for
predictive and prescriptive analytics.
Using the machine shop as an example, the machine
data it collected during a morning shift showed that
its machines broke down regularly during the 3rd shift.
Using diagnostic analytics to delve deeper into the
data collected during the durations the alarm rang out,
it was discovered that a program was changed the
previous day. These program changes were identified
as the underlining cause of the failures.
To eliminate the breakdown that occurred during
the 3rd shift, the programmer reviewed the
codes from the previous day, debugged it, and
correctly deployed it. This successfully solved
the issue and stopped the alarm from ringing.
Thus, with diagnostic analytics the machine shop
successfully;
• Discovered Causation
Correlating machine data with historical data,
the shop floor carried out diagnostic analyses
to know the cause of its problems.
• Developed Solutions
The analytics done also provided a basis
for initiating a solution to ease the problem
and stop it from re-occurring in the future.
• Built a Foundation for Predictive
and Prescriptive Analytics
Successfully understood why this is
happening ensures the solution found
can be applied in the future before a
breakdown occurs.

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With MachineMetrics Edge platform, you can easily collect and
analyze low and high-frequency machine data to quickly develop
and deploy predictive analytics algorithms.
P R E D I C T I V E A N A LY T I C S
Predictive analytics involves the analysis of historical
and real-time data to provide insight into what could
happen in the future with high-levels of accuracy.
With predictive analytics, the future is no longer
a blank plate and this is made possible through
the use of data analytics, artificial intelligence,
simulation, and machine learning.
AI-powered platforms employ machine learning
and anomaly detection to analyze large data sets to
create forecasts for specific months, days or years.
The large data sets are collected from business
operations and assets. The collected data serve as
the basis for predictive analytics.
P R E D I C T I V E A N A LY T I C S U S E
C A S E S F O R M A N U FA C T U R IN G
In manufacturing, predictive analytics has become
an important concept because of its ability to
help manufacturers plan for the future. The data
sets collected in manufacturing to aid predictive
analytical initiatives, include real-time machine data,
inventory data, data from descriptive and diagnostic
analytics etc. Once collected, predictive analytics
can be initiated and using the machine shop as an
example, predictive analytics can be used
to drive production scheduling policies, predictive
maintenance, optimize machine performance,
and enhance productivity levels.
• Develop Future Schedules
With increased demand comes the need
for increased production activities and only
a few shop floors can switch up their production
capacity without adequate planning. Thus,
predicting future demand enables the creation
of schedules that take into account the
expected change in consumer consumption rate.
• Predictive Maintenance
Equipment breakdown leads to downtime and
a less motivated workforce. With predictive
analytics, unplanned downtime becomes
planned downtime which gives operators
scheduled time-offs for other planned
activities. Patterns in the data can indicate
that a component of the machine is beginning
to fail. Predicting when that component might
fail means maintenance teams can plan to
preventatively fix the problem before it causes
unplanned downtime.
• Enhance Productivity Levels
Predictive analytics provide a basis for
advanced capacity planning which enables
manufacturers to optimize machine efficiency
and productivity levels.
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Create and manage preventative maintenance schedules in
MachineMetrics that are tied to calendar time, usage time,
or initiated from machine conditions. Assign maintenance
tasks through a workflow.
P R E S C R I P T I V E A N A LY T I C S
One of the newest types of data analytics is
prescriptive analytics, which takes descriptive,
diagnostic, and predictive data and uses it to
make recommendations for future actions and
improvements. Prescriptive analytics give advice
on potential outcomes and recommend what will
happen if those outcomes are reached. By pinpointing
the best outcomes and making recommendations,
companies can focus on delivering amazing customer
experiences. Prescriptive analytics help companies
make decisions that reflect customers’ needs and
changing trends.
Some credit card and insurance companies use
prescriptive analytics to analyze past factors like
purchase history and credit score, to predict how a
customer will behave in the future and what actions
the company can take. Prescriptive analytics is
action-based and helps keep the company ahead of
trends to make smart, future-focused decisions.
Prescriptive analytics allows lesser skilled workers to
be provided instructions that would normally require
a more experienced higher skilled worker with tribal
knowledge. Advances in prescriptive analytics will
improve the skills gap in many industries, including
manufacturing.
P R E S C R IP T I V E A N A LY T I C S U S E
C A S E S F O R M A N U FA C T U R IN G
In manufacturing, prescriptive analytics can be applied
in diverse ways to deliver an optimized production
environment and to create customer behavioral
models that influence decision making processes.
A manufacturer can use descriptive data to develop
multiple products which will appeal to customers
according to age demographics or location.
This expansion will require an increase in production
capacity, the need for an updated inventory, and
advanced planning. Using the machine shop as
an example, expanding operations to include the
machining of complex parts will require different
materials and tools. With prescriptive analytics, the
machine shop can devise multiple solutions which
take into consideration capital and equipment
constraints. The machine shop stakeholders can
then choose the most viable option for expanding
their operations.
In one example, when a machine alarms out, we can
deliver instructions to the operator on how to fix the
problem when it occurs. In another example, we can
deliver a message to the CNC programmer in real-time
that a program change caused a quality issue, giving
the information to the programmer that recent change
to the program caused an inadvertent issue.
ADAPTIVE CONTROL
Prescriptive analytics typically involves the human
in the loop to make pro-active change. With control
over the machine, changes can be made directly to
the machine to improve throughput and avoid failures.
These features are often built into the machine itself,
but with the advent of machine learning, and the
benefit of newer data sets, after-market features can
be developed with this data. For example, machine
learning algorithms can be developed to detect
cutting tool wear, and instruct the machine to change
the tool - preventing unplanned downtime, improving
quality, and improving tool life.
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Part Three
H O W DATA O N P R O D U CT I O N A N D Q U A L I T Y
C O M B I N E TO C R E AT E U S E F U L A N A LY T I C S
“69% of decision-makers believe Industrial Analytics will be
crucial for business success in 2020, with 15% considering
it crucial today.”(Source)
Production and quality are undeniably interrelated.
A gain in one that results in a loss in the other
is not moving the manufacturing process, or its
associated costs, forward. In the past, data on
performance was often looked at separately from
quality. Whether a machine—or their operators—
were lagging during the overnight shift set up on a
big order was seen as distinct from the quality of
the output.
The theory being that the customer would be okay
with a longer production time on their order as
long as the quality was there. But that’s no longer
the case. Customers the world over are expecting
more and rightfully so. To achieve a better level
of satisfaction, the data on performance AND
quality must be combined to achieve industry or
organizational level markers. These metrics are
the difference between keeping a client happy and
simply keeping them.
G O I N G F R O M D E S C R IP T I V E
T O P R E D I C T I V E A N A LY T I C S
The bottom line in manufacturing analytics is to go
beyond the simple collection and display of data
(descriptive) to leveraging it at a more
granular level to be able to predict issues on
the shop floor and save money while improving
output, in the process. Taking historical data, for
example, and estimating what isn’t known, such
as future demand, the statistical possibility of
machine failure and so on will help everyone from
the operator on the shop floor to the higher-level
decision-makers to see where production is at or
likely to be, at any given moment.
MachineMetrics provide diverse tools that
enable manufacturers to collect shop floor data
and go from descriptive to predictive analytics
while reaping the accrued benefits. As with any
prediction or estimate, there is no guarantee of
accuracy, but it’s far more likely to be valid when
enough data is used to support the analytics, than
human predictions.
All in all, the manufacturing industry is seeing that
data analytics aren’t just about ‘keeping track of
things’ but about increasing revenue, reducing
costs and maintaining a level of customer service
that will keep it relevant in the years to come.
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A BOUT M ACHINEME TRIC S
MachineMetrics is manufacturing’s first Industrial IoT Platform for Machines.
We transform analytics into action through universal machine connectivity,
cloud data Infrastructure, and communication workflows that optimize
machine operation. Right now, hundreds of manufacturers have connected
thousands of machines to MachineMetrics across global factories.
Our platform is enabling these companies to deliver the right information
to the right person at the right time to improve their machine performance
and productivity, increase their capacity utilization and ultimately win more
business to remain globally competitive.

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