The Lakehouse for Manufacturing

Every industry is being challenged in how they think about topics like generative AI, data sharing, productivity, predictive analytics. But what does this mean specifically in the manufacturing industry? Why are these shifts so critical? Why does the future depend on it?

Manufacturers are re-imagining their businesses to go beyond merely being efficient at providing the primary unit of production - the next SKU, machine, vehicle or airplane - and instead constantly focus on delivering a technology-enabled business that demonstrates greater scalability, with higher growth, stickier revenue streams and greater resilience to external shocks.

The industry generates immense data volumes (2-4 times larger than industries like retail, media and financial services), and this data is growing at exponential rates, estimated at 200-500% over the next five years. Much of this massive growth in data comes from semi-structured and unstructured data emanating from connected workers, buildings, vehicles and factories. The urgency to make use of this data is extreme, but companies arent able to even consider initiatives like predictive analytics or AI and tap into the differentiated value that comes from their data without removing the siloes and friction in current data architectures.

Unfortunately, fragmented approaches to data architecture have yielded sub-par value and thrown up considerable barriers to transformation - as over 70% of data projects in manufacturing stall at Proof of Concept (PoC) stage and do not see sustainable value realization. A number of reasons as to why this is the case:

• Legacy technology (on-premises and cloud data warehouses) are too complex and costly for growing volumes of data from connected products and operations
• Sporadic batch-driven data and analytics have prevented real-time insights & action, significantly impacting the ability to make critical operational decisions
• Separate formats and architectures for structured and unstructured data, providing disjointed views of customers, operations and assets
• Fragmented tooling that makes innovation more costly and lengthy

Plain and simple: Manufacturers need a comprehensive data platform that can not just handle massive volumes of data but effectively and seamlessly operationalize the value from data, analytics and AI.

Introducing the Lakehouse for Manufacturing

Today, we are thrilled to announce the Lakehouse for Manufacturing, which is the only enterprise data platform that can unleash the full value of manufacturing data to deliver intelligent manufacturing networks, differentiated customer experiences, smarter products and sustainable businesses.

The Lakehouse offers what data warehouses and clouds cannot, the ability to leverage all of your data to perform AI at scale with reduced TCO. With Databricks, Manufacturers are empowered with real-time insights to make critical decisions that reduce cost, boost industrial productivity, improve customer responsiveness and accelerate innovation. Manufacturers on the Lakehouse have seen:

• 50% fewer on-site service visits and 10% reduction in unplanned downtime for critical equipment, by delivering more precise outcomes and personalized solutions
• 200%+ increase in offer conversion rates, with frictionless online experiences
• 30%-50% improvement in operations forecast accuracy, powered by real-time insights for agile manufacturing & logistics
• 50x faster time to insight, empowering the manufacturing workforce of the future
• 90% decrease in time to market of new innovations, fostering product innovation at the speed of data

Pre-built solution accelerators for manufacturing

Built on top of Lakehouse for Manufacturing, Databricks and our ecosystem of partners offer packaged solution accelerators to help organizations tackle the most common and high-value use cases in the industry. Popular accelerators include:

• Digital Twins: Process real-world data in real time, compute insights at scale and deliver to multiple downstream applications for data-driven decisions
• Part-Level Forecasting: Perform demand forecasting at the part level rather than the aggregate level to avoid inventory stockouts, shorten lead-times and maximize sales
• Overall Equipment Effectiveness: Incrementally ingest and process data from sensor/IoT devices in a variety of formats and provide a consistent approach to KPI reporting across a global manufacturing network
• Computer Vision: Development and implementation of computer vision applications to automate critical manufacturing processes, improving quality, reducing waste, re-work costs, and optimizing flow
• Predictive Maintenance (IoT): Ingest real-time IIoT data from field devices and perform complex time-series processing to maximize uptime and minimize maintenance costs

A growing partner ecosystem

Global solution integrators like Accenture, Avanade, Capgemini, Deloitte, and EY have implementation expertise and knowledge of vertical practices that span many geographies and business organizations. Using this knowledge, they have developed purpose-built solutions that work seamlessly with the Databricks Lakehouse platform to deliver high-value use cases such as digital twins, connected vehicles, smart manufacturing and supply chain visibility. Partner Brickbuilder Solutions and popular use cases include:

• Avanade Intelligent Manufacturing: Harness your data, drive interoperability and provide enhanced insights at scale using analytics and AI
• Celebal Technologies Migrate to Databricks: Maximize the business value of your SAP ERP landscape and achieve value drivers like supply chain optimization, production planning and sustainability.
• DataSentics Quality Inspector: Leverage computer vision to automate quality control and detect defects, foreign objects and anomalies in your manufacturing process.
• Deloitte: Automate your Monthly Management Reporting to deliver dynamic insights and enable a digital organization supported by enterprise data lake and advanced analytics.
• Tredence Predictive Supply Risk Management: Drive nth-tier visibility into order flows and supplier performance to boost efficiency, manage exceptions and improve resiliency.

"At Capgemini, our IDEA framework has been leveraged by some of the largest manufacturers in the world to modernize their data estates using various Databricks products. The ability to put Lakehouse for Manufacturing at the center of this architecture will ensure that the solution is open, secured, scalable, and optimized for total cost of ownership. This blueprint and capacity to deliver the platform as code is accelerating the time to business outcomes by up to 40%."  - Eric Reich, AI & Data Engineering Offer Leader and Global Head, Capgemini

"Using Lakehouse, a business can utilize all data sources in their value chain so that the power of predictive AI and ML insights can be realized to identify inefficiencies in production processes, improve productivity, enhance quality control, and reduce supply chain costs. This data-driven manufacturing is where we see the industry going as companies seek to accelerate their Smart Factory transformations."  - Anthony Abbattista, Principal and Smart Factory Analytics Offering Leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP

“Avanade are delighted to partner with industry innovators like Databricks. As the leading Microsoft Partner for Manufacturing, we see Manufacturers getting smarter about how they use digital technologies – because they have to. Times are tough and innovations today must deliver more value more quickly across more of the organization than ever before. The potential of Lakehouse is truly exciting and will play a significant part in our Industry X and Smart Digital Manufacturing services,” - Thomas Nall, Avanade Manufacturing Lead

Databricks works with technology partners like Alteryx, AtScale, Fivetran, Microsoft Power BI, Qlik, Sigma, Simplement, Tableau and Thoughtspot to accelerate the availability and value of data. This allows businesses to unify data from complex source systems and operationalize it for analytics, AI and ML on the Databricks Lakehouse Platform. Technology solutions include:

• SAP Datasphere: Databricks integrates SAP data, including its complete business context, into the lakehouse platform.
• Alteryx: Combine the ease of Alteryx with the Databricks Lakehouse to empower all employees – both business and technical experts – to collaborate on data analytics and solve manufacturing challenges.
• AtScale Semantic Layer: Scale BI on the lakehouse to create a holistic view of manufacturing's production and supply chain data.
• Crosser.io - An intelligent pipeline to ingest, analyze and accelerate your industrial and IOT data to the Lakehouse
• Fivetran: Fivetran accelerates manufacturers' data movement from disparate on-prem, cloud and event-driven enterprise data sources - including SAP - to Databricks in real time to address supply chain bottlenecks and unlock data and AI innovation.
• Qlik: Qlik Cloud Data Integration helps manufacturers deliver, transform, and unify their SAP data while ensuring that data from the factory floor, inventory, productivity, freight, and fulfillment sources arrive in Databricks in real-time.
• Sigma: Connect to your lakehouse securely in seconds and start exploring, analyzing and reporting on datasets such as inventory management and fulfillment, freight cost optimization, supply risk, quality control, and product performance.
• Simplement: integrate real time SAP data in the Lakehouse to maximize value and insights
• Microsoft Power BI: Create resilient production and supply chains by democratizing your data in a trusted and secure hub, uncovering powerful insights with intelligent visuals, and translating those insights into impact across all your teams with Microsoft Power BI.
• Tableau: Connect Tableau to the Databricks Lakehouse Platform and turn real-time manufacturing data into real-time insights.
• ThoughtSpot: Get live, self-service analytics that enables users to access data and insights from KPIs to transaction level details that lead to better negotiating power for pricing and contracts, reduction in costs, and a consolidated supplier base.

Want to learn more about Lakehouse for Manufacturing? Click here for our solutions page. We could not be more excited to launch the Lakehouse for Manufacturing as we seek to help manufacturing leaders put data, AI and analytics at the very center of their business transformation.

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