At Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week 2024,The Data Shack was one of the key exhibitors on the show floor, co-exhibiting a stand with Denodo. Molly Cooper sat down with Chief Marketing Officer, Al Herron, to discuss what Data Shack is currently up to, how working with The Manufacturer has benefited them and the current industry trends.
MC: Can you give us an overview of what Data Shack does and how it serves the manufacturing industry, as well as what you do within that?
AH: The Data Shack is the home of analytics. For over 20 years we have advised some of the best run factories and processing plants in the world. From early statistics and SPC tools through to big data, Industry 4.0 and now connected factories, we are experts in industrial data and the type of problems factory leaders can solve, increasingly with AI. Our founder and CEO, Anni Toner, is a data scientist and a hands-on Six Sigma practitioner.
Six Sigma is a methodology that drives continual improvement across the factory chain. We apply AI within this methodology to ensure factories are more efficient, cut waste and reduce cost, and deliver better products. After 20 years of developing solutions across the factory, it was a natural progression for us to build a platform to deliver a smart factory in-a-box. We launched Sigmafi at Smart Manufacturing & Engineering week, which was a great show for us to showcase its capabilities.
How was your experience at Smart Manufacturing Week?
We worked very closely with The Manufacturer team to identify what kind of audience would be there. The personnel we are looking for are plant managers, hands-on engineers, continual improvement managers, quality control, heavy machinery maintenance managers and those that look at the end-to-end processes across the manufacturing plant. We want to talk to the business people trying to solve those problems, either within part of the factory or across that value factory chain.
After the show, we looked at the job titles of the people we spoke to from the keynotes and the stand and we found that we were right in front of our audience. The conversations we had were fantastic and it was the right show for us to be at and to engage with the right type of audience.
What has the relationship with The Manufacturer given to Data Shack? What benefits do you see in working with The Manufacturer, and how has this partnership influenced your marketing strategies?
Before Data Shack, I worked at Dell and looked after international marketing for its advanced analytics platform – a key market for that was manufacturing. This means I’ve had a long-term relationship with people such as Managing Director at The Manufacturer, Henry Anson and to me, it’s important that I know people that have been in the same business as myself. Then, after meeting some of the newer team members, I found it easy to understand how we could utilise some of the marketing with The Manufacturer and the show within our first quarter.
Some of the research produced by The Manufacturer resonated with what we’re finding in the marketplace. We ended up leading a couple of campaigns using that research, and by relaying those facts back to our audience, we created some transparency. It became less around the point solution and more about the longer-term relationship.
As Data Shack evolves from a consultancy business into a software provider, The Manufacturer will continue to be part of our marketing strategy.
In your recent research, you cited The Manufacturer’s ‘Marketing to Manufacturers’ briefing. Can you discuss the importance of The Manufacturers’ research reports and what they provide?
Sigmafi is a smart factory in-a-box. Manufacturers can come and find an end-to-end solution across the value chain that helps them become smart. One of the trends that we’re seeing, which is tied within this, is the AI debate. The debate of whether a company should implement AI is over, it is now about how they are going to embed it and into what processes.
As such, we built a guide for this using some of The Manufacturer’s research called Fast is The New Smart: Five Tips for Faster Smarter Factories. We quote that research on the first page that ‘63% of manufacturers don’t know where to start with AI’, which we find is the case.
The decisions around AI have been made in the boardroom and research has shown it as the fourth highest priority for companies. The Manufacturer states that only nine per cent are currently leveraging it and 63% don’t know where to start with AI. As a company with 20-25 years’ experience on the factory floor, it resonated with us. We use external research because people trust independent third-parties. It isn’t us telling customers about something that we have a vested interest in because we sell software. But using research from manufacturing leaders about the state of play validates what we’re doing.
What trends did you observe at Smart Manufacturing Week that you believe will shape the future of smart manufacturing?
As mentioned, one trend people are rushing to invest in is AI. There is this mindset where, if we apply AI in a factory with people that have never worked with it, who don’t understand its processes, it will still fix supply chain issues, incoming goods, ingredients, quality control and predictive maintenance. AI isn’t a shiny stick to solve problems; companies need to be choosing their use cases carefully.
Gartner have found that the future of AI adoption will be around super apps; a single app that can pull in others, and additional sources of data to use in a smart factory. Gartner forecasts that by 2026, around 50% of factory users will be using super apps.
This will be key for the adoption of AI and will also fight the crisis of the current skills gap within the industry. We find a lot of the younger generation of engineers are much more digitally savvy than the engineers we were seeing 20 years ago, so it is the ideal role for them to come into. We are always saying how they are never off their phones and apps, and maybe now it will be of good use to the sector!
