Summary: AI Agent technology has sufficiently advanced that manufacturers can now use them to build value-creating operational apps today. This does not mean that all firms will incorporate AI well. In fact, the non-deterministic nature of AI means it will only magnify the dysfunction of firms that do not have a well-defined AI data strategy. […]

Mergers and acquisitions are a natural part of the manufacturing economic cycle. Because manufacturing is a broad category composed of many cyclical industries, firms naturally experience periods of consolidation and fragmentation. Additionally, any manufacturer that has years of success reaches some limit of scale. When organic growth rates taper, management can look outwards for opportunities. From […]

Automotive is one of the most complex forms of manufacturing around. The product is an intricate assembly of components and subcomponents. Its planning requires intense coordination of global supply chains. Its execution requires efficient sequencing of processes. And its orders must comply with rigorous safety and testing standards at every node of production.  For large, […]

A manufacturing operation is full of specialized services. From low-level machine data to massive data warehouses, the digital side of an operation requires integration with many different applications. As a manufacturing data hub, one of Rhize’s key responsibilities is to coordinate, transform, and store data as it passes between systems. To meet this responsibility, Rhize […]

SAP has announced an end-of-life schedule for its core manufacturing applications, SAP ME and SAP MII. Known for their power and flexibility, these applications have long existed deep in the technical stack of complex, multi-site manufacturing operations. The total value of production that has happened on these applications is easily billions, if not trillions, of […]

The Problem: Data Without Context Data without governance is a breeding ground for errors. Wrong inputs lead to wrong decisions, systems don’t talk to each other properly, and finding root causes is incredibly difficult without proper tracking. The solution is not more data, but rather the right context for the data already available. Grounding AI […]

  Organizations across many industries use parts of the ISA-95 standard to improve manufacturing operations and system integration. While the most well-known application of ISA-95 is for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), it’s also applied to production tracking, data standardization, automation, or real-time decision making.    This outlines some key vendors […]

Manufacturing data hubs are gaining traction in the industry as a new solution for unifying, standardizing, and orchestrating plant and operational data. But what is a manufacturing data hub? And how do you identify one?

This article describes how a Manufacturing Data Hub can help operational manufacturing teams break down silos, rapidly develop new solutions, and stack use cases in a way that compounds value.​ In this context, “Operations” refers to everything that happens to coordinate and execute actual production. That is to say, “Operations” means all of “level-3.” This […]

This article explores how a Manufacturing Data Hub makes data-science work in manufacturing more effective, efficient, and enjoyable. In short: High quality data and governance protects your analysis from the classic problem of Garbage In, Garbage Out. The ISA-95 ontology uses semantics designed specifically to represent a manufacturing operation, including its every entity, relationship, and […]