Mohamed Zaki, Philip Woodall and Andy Neely recently ran a workshop on Manufacturing Analytics: The role of Big Data in the Future of Manufacturing. The workshop was held at the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) on 1 February 2016 and was funded by the Cambridge Big Data-EPSRC Collaborative Workshops Fund.
Representatives from a range of UK manufacturing and technology sectors (SME and established companies), research councils and academics attended this workshop. The morning session had four speakers:
- Professor Andy Neely, IfM - [presentation]
- Dr Mohamed Zaki, IfM - [presentation]
- Professor Boris Otta, Franhoufer Institute -[presentation], and
- Daniel Keely, Cisco - [presentation]
In the afternoon, the delegates split into four groups to discuss:
- What problems in manufacturing organisations could analytics potentially solve?,
- What are the main barriers that prevent manufacturers from using analytics?,
- What technologies and ICT infrastructure do manufacturers need to enable analytics?,
- What are the potential new manufacturing business models that analytics could enable?.
A representative from each group presented back their group views about these questions. At the end of the day, we had a panel session to discuss general issues about the role of data in manufacturing. The outcome of this workshop will be a working paper, that should be released in May.