Human-centric, data-to-decision analytics for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)

Having a platform built on your subject matter experts’ knowledge is the best starting point.

Your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and engineers have been building and maintaining your equipment for decades. Their expertise and knowledge is the best available expertise on how your equipment should be operated, maintained, and evaluated. Incorporating their knowledge to best evaluate data from the equipment and what that data means, is the ideal starting point for the application of analytics.

Analytics platforms using purely Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence may lack insight on what the data means and the meaning of events within the data. Without human interaction or interpretation, more advanced analytics, such as predictions, have a difficult time achieving the desired outcome. Without a determined outcome, the process can take months to evaluate, and even then, the analytic effectiveness and accuracy can remain unknown and unproven.

We believe the best starting point for analytics is one that starts by using your own proven analytic methods as a foundation and then allows for a natural, building blocks approach.

Using a platform that allows engineers to be part of the process helps with the adoption of analytics.

Implementing a platform that automates current processes creates short-term and significant value.

In order to gain value from large data sets and sensor data, only a platform that starts to automate part of the process can create scalable value. Meaning, the platform must be able to interpret data, generate insights, and provide recommended outcomes for end users. Otherwise, it becomes just another way to visualize and explore data. This can add value on its own, but doesn’t reach the impact that automation provides. As noted earlier, building a system on your proven analytic methods, and then adding a layer of more advanced analytics, such as machine learning based predictions, is the best route to a highly accurate, automated platform.

Building a platform with a solid foundation of your experts’ knowledge is the best way to approach implementing an entire suite of analytics.

Building a platform configured by your own SMEs creates the optimal foundation for an entire range of analytics. Your experts can provide knowledge about significant areas such as:

The meaning of key data. How sensors are related to each other.

What constitutes an actionable event?  What constitutes a false alarm?

Exceptions to the rule.

Increased Efficiency in Creating Detection Models

Challenge: A large enterprise client had a robust analysis setup with 3 detection models and 150 threshold variants. The client’s process for iterating detection models originally took 3–4 months and required engineers to rely on development from either a software engineer, data scientist, or an outside software vendor. 

Solution: NarrativeWave’s platform provided an intuitive pipeline, enabling their business users to quickly create, manage, and iterate their own detection models. The platform is user-directed, managed and utilized by the customer’s internal engineers, without the ongoing need of developers or data scientists.

Impact: The iteration timeframe has been dramatically reduced since using NarrativeWave. More importantly, this customer’s engineers can setup iterations on their own, allowing for immediate impact on the business operations and for their clients.

Enhanced Next Generation Knowledge Base

Challenge: Engineers have been detecting alarms individually for 30 or more years. While working with a major engine manufacturer, NarrativeWave found the detection process was not recorded, standardized, or made available to other engineers and management within the organization. 

Solution: The platform is setup to record the engineers’ knowledge and feedback, resulting in a platform that gets smarter over time. Engineers can customize the business analysis and recommendations to make them as accurate as possible, therefore creating an evolving knowledge base for SMEs. 

Impact: The outcome resulted in the manufacturer, for the first time, being able to capture their engineers’ knowledge. This increased collaboration between engineers, improved standardization, and allowed valuable knowledge to be visible across the organization.

Improved Fleet Health & Management

Challenge: Manufacturers and equipment operators currently lack visibility into assets across their entire fleet, making it difficult to identify poorly performing assets and best performing assets. 

Solution: With NarrativeWave, asset performance can be evaluated near real-time, enabling organizations to better manage critical assets and plan for future actions, all by the click of a mouse.

Impact: The platform-wide view provides significant time-savings of tracking and managing fleet health for equipment manufacturers and operators. Additionally, the platform reduces unplanned downtime and helps organizations prevent critical equipment failures.

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