Factory data analytics key to the corporate world

Plant and factory data – real time and historical – is being recognised by major global manufacturers as at least as valuable a tool for corporate management as financial data. So says Michael Saucier, vice president of marketing at former real time plant data historian software developer OSI Soft, based in California. The firm, which has its roots in operational data capture in industries from the oil and gas sector, to refineries and the big power utilities, has found itself pulled into corporate management, and now believes its technology is “15 years ahead of the financial world”. Says Saucier: “Companies like Eastman Chemical, which has 60 of our systems monitoring and providing analytics for manufacturing, warehousing, logistics and stocks, are now buying our systems for corporate infrastructure performance management, looking after their CRM and ERP systems. “We’re pervasive on the operations side in data terms; now we’re migrating into the corporate community,” he adds. “We’re helping the Fortune 500 companies to improve their operations in logistics, shipping, manufacturing, quality, understanding bottlenecks and seeing opportunities.” This is way more than mere massive database data historian technology; OSI’s systems include analytics with a self-service abstraction layer that Saucier says enables business users to get “high fidelity real time performance information” out of its systems. He says companies are now using or consider the system for everything from IT infrastructure monitoring and management, along the lines of Computer Associates Unicenter and HP’s Openview, to dynamic real time asset monitoring with key performance indicators.