Data, data everywhere and not a drop to drink

In 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote “The rime of the ancient mariner.” It’s a story about a mariner stuck alone on a ship, doomed after he killed an albatross. At some point, he gets thirsty, and while he’s surrounded by water, since the sea is salt, none of it’s drinkable.

In making production facilities better, and more intelligent, we face a similar challenge. Production lines, and the software and processes controlling them, are a potential ocean of data. Data that we can use to open up the path to improvement. However, while it’s certainly possible to obtain all that data and store it in a digital environment, having the ocean at our hands doesn’t necessarily make it useful.