Production thrives when data supersedes intuition

They say you should trust your instincts. If you’ve worked in the same factory for years, you’ll know the machinery like the back of your hand and have an idea of when it’s likely to go on the fritz. But such guesswork could cost a business huge amounts of money in unscheduled downtime.

A factory I visited recently shocked me when they told me their maintenance procedure. They said they know when changes need to be made because the control room starts to shake.

At the heart of this way of thinking is a reactive approach to maintenance, and indeed data. Making estimates of failure based on such warning signs does no justice to the individual components that make up a manufacturing plant.

Too many businesses make judgements on an entire population of machines. And even when a company does use data, it’s often using techniques that deal in averages across large populations. Using historical data, they predict the life of a component, based on average stresses, inputs and operating environment.