Business Intelligence for Manufacturing in 5 easy steps
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Many companies in the manufacturing industry use Oracle JD Edwards ERP software to plan and manage their production processes. This provides a solid foundation for daily information, but many professionals want more. They wonder how they can use this production data for strategic insights and long-term analysis. They want to look further and identify trends that help make production more efficient. Business Intelligence (BI) offers useful tools for this. Here, we explain how to get started. Before implementing a BI solution, it’s essential to have a solid plan and to build a team with all stakeholders, from IT to the end users of the BI solution. Follow these steps for an effective approach:
1: Define Objectives
Define your objectives and identify the stakeholders. There are various goals for BI in manufacturing. For example, you can use BI to gain insight into how well production aligns with your sales and inventory strategy. Or use BI for reports that assist in quality programs, allowing you to analyze aspects such as the amount of waste and productivity levels. Clearly document your goals and develop a medium-term plan.
2: Determine Infrastructure
The BI infrastructure choice is primarily important for IT, not directly for users. You can choose a traditional BI solution that you manage yourself or a cloud-based solution. An on-premise BI infrastructure offers maximum control and flexibility. Cloud BI provides benefits such as lower startup costs and access to proven BI software without needing to develop everything yourself. Depending on the investment, you can choose an acquisition that affects your fixed expenses (Capex) or a subscription with monthly costs (Opex) if you opt for the cloud.
3: Define Information Needs
Together with stakeholders, determine what specific information is needed and in what format it should be available. It’s essential to carefully assess the data quality of the sources.
4: Develop Reports
Then, decide what the reports and analyses should look like. It’s important that your production dashboards are easy to understand. Good BI reports meet the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic, and Time-bound), ensuring they are clear and practical.
5: Design a Data Model
The data model, the foundational structure of your BI system, depends on how your production processes operate. Make-to-order production requires a different reporting model than process-oriented production. With a traditional BI solution, you can design a specific data model tailored to your company. With a cloud BI solution, you can leverage existing data models.
These steps provide a solid foundation for a successful implementation. Let’s get started! In the next blog, we’ll describe various practical examples of Oracle BI in a manufacturing environment using Oracle JD Edwards ERP.
