Copyright © 2015 Path To Progress

Manufacturing is one area that has always used data analysis. The rise of so called “big data”, a confluence of cheap sensors, cheap memory, faster computers, and improved machine learning algorithms, has been a boon for manufacturing. Data analysis for quality control, yield enhancement, anomaly detection, etc. has always been a part of manufacturing. Now, such analysis has been greatly enhanced due to the technologies listed above.

Very soon, modern methods of data analysis for manufacturing will become necessary for a company to remain competitive.

Machine Learning as a concept has been in existence for many decades now. However, most manufacturing operations — such as repairing an aircraft engine, planning the product mix in cement production, or ensuring energy control in a large facility — are still largely dependent on experience-based human decisions. The advent of Big Data technology, coupled with efficient data storage mechanisms and parallel processing frameworks, has found new use for the petabytes of data generated by manufacturing operations. Applying Machine Learning techniques to the shop floor has enabled increased accuracy in decisionmaking and improvement in performance.