As manufacturing industries embrace digitalization with their ERP solutions, they gain access to vast amounts of data that can boost productivity and reduce bottlenecks.
In this blog, we explore how ETL (extract, transform, and load) tools can help manufacturers by providing access to timely data to help with predictive maintenance, optimizing operational efficiencies, and improving productivity.
Different data challenges in manufacturing
Manufacturers work in data ecosystems that are filled with disconnected systems and processes. This creates data challenges that make it nearly impossible to establish a unified source of truth. As a result, it becomes difficult to identify and understand operational issues that, if fixed, could improve overall efficiency and help optimize manufacturing costs.
1. Data in silos
Fragmented infrastructure results in data being segmented across different systems like ERP solutions, third-party tools, independent business applications, local machine sensors, and more. Bringing data together from these independent systems and removing silos helps determine the overall operational workflow and how data impacts it.
2. Inconsistent data formatting
Different systems follow different protocols in how data is generated and stored, so it needs to be standardized. When unifying data, standardizing it by fixing formatting differences is essential in building an optimized data pipeline.
3. Timely access to data
In the manufacturing industry, timely access to data can help in predictive maintenance and smarter operations. ETL tools help extract data from multiple sources—like machines, sensors, and ERP systems—and consolidate it into centralized dashboards. This helps floor managers understand key operational metrics, optimize raw material procuring, and manage manpower effectively to ensure on-time delivery.
4. Optimizing and enriching data
Some manufacturing processes rely on external information like weather data, third-party metrics, and energy consumption readings to optimize operations. While most of this data is readily available online or from third-party vendors, ETL tools streamline the process of integrating and enriching it with internal data sources. Bringing first-party and third-party data together results in deeper insights and better decision-making across the production pipeline.
5. Migrating to a cloud-based system
Most manufacturers still rely on legacy systems, limiting scale and efficiency. Migrating to a cloud-based solution offers significant benefits, from improved access to data to streamlined manufacturing processes—however, the migration process can be complex due to fragmented data across multiple systems. ETL tools simplify this transition by extracting data from these systems and consolidating it while improving its quality.
The significance of Zoho DataPrep's ETL solution for manufacturers
Manufacturers have a large volume of data that gets generated across production lines, supply chains, equipment monitoring systems, inventory systems, and more. Zoho DataPrep's ETL tool helps with:
Improved operational efficiency: Zoho DataPrep's data pipeline can integrate data from different systems, transform it, and push it to a business intelligence platform to understand it better and get powerful insights that improve efficiency.
Near-real-time analytics: Zoho DataPrep allows near-real-time data processing, providing manufacturers with up-to-date insights to detect bottlenecks, monitor equipment performance, and optimize production workflows.
Predictive maintenance: With access to historical and current data, Zoho DataPrep can help with forecasting equipment failures, implementing proactive maintenance strategies, reducing unplanned downtime, and optimizing maintenance costs.
Quality control: Zoho DataPrep's ETL pipeline can consolidate data from production systems, quality assurance systems, and other digital systems. Any anomaly in this consolidated data can be set to trigger instant alerts, helping build a robust quality process to maintain high manufacturing standards.
Easy migration: Easily identify data in siloed infrastructures and bring it together by cleaning and standardizing it for better data accessibility and management.
In a nutshell
A manufacturing process runs on numerous independent systems and equipment, making data integration a complex challenge. However, once consolidated, this data holds immense potential to optimize workflows, reduce operational downtime and costs, and improve productivity and ROI.
Zoho DataPrep helps you build robust ETL data pipelines that allow you to easily unify, clean, and prepare your data for analysis so you can unlock its full value. Start you free trial to understand the true potential of ETL capabilities in your manufacturing process.
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