Advanced Industrial Analytics, Smucker’s Stays Agile, Essential Businesses during COVID-19

Analytics Super-Charge Expertise Already in the Boardroom, Warehouse or Well Pad

GrayMatter just released a new guide detailing how companies can increase equipment performance using Advanced Industrial Analytics.

Industrial analytics used to be the domain of huge companies that could afford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a data center, but that’s no longer the case.

There’s now an out-of-the-box, machine learning solution available to everyone, and many companies are already collecting the necessary data from sensors on industrial equipment.

GrayMatter VP Carson Drake puts it this way, “Would you go to a sporting event with no scoreboard? No. So why go into a manufacturing plant if you can’t see what’s going on?”

One of the first steps is applying analytics to artificial intelligence in the cloud so companies can find performance insights and turn them into operational directives.

To get there, the approach breaks down this way:
1) Setting Goals
2) Making Predictions
3) Connecting Operations

Check out the full approach only in GrayMatter’s Advanced Industrial Analytics guide.

Smucker’s ‘Extremely Agile’ in Meeting COVID-19 Product Demands

J.M. Smucker Company CEO Mark Smucker appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” to talk about how the Ohio-based food producer has responded to increased demand from shoppers stocking up during shelter-in-place advisories across the nation.

“For the most part our supply chain is working very well. We have about 25 plants across North American, and all of them are running at, essentially, full capacity,” Smucker said. “We have had no issues from a health standpoint. And we have had obviously to work very hard to make sure our incredible employees are engaged and are able to come to work, and that they feel comfortable coming to work.”

Smucker’s has focused on keeping most of its workforce (about two-thirds) in place to maintain production, offered additional pay to employees and focused on high-demand goods, and those available for purchase online, such as Milk-Bone, 9Lives and Rachel Ray Nutrish pet food, Folgers coffee and JIF creamy peanut butter.

Smucker also said the company has committed hundreds of thousands of dollars to supporting local food banks, relief agencies and matching employee charitable donations.

Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers

Many GrayMatter partners and customers fall into the category of essential critical infrastructure workers, just as GrayMatter does.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has some helpful guidelines to explain what an essential business is and how to share that information with partners. Find more details here.

GrayMatter works with companies in the 16 critical infrastructure industries that the Department says are essential to slowing the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak.

GrayMatter’s employees will continue to provide essential hardware, software and services to workers in critical manufacturing, communications, chemical, energy, food and agriculture, information technology, public health, transportation, water and other sectors.

For more an essential businesses, and how GrayMatter is helping industrial operations expand their remote worker capability, watch our LinkedIn Live session with GrayMatter’s Alan Hinchman from 2 p.m. Thursday, March 26.

Join GrayMatter’s Virtual emPOWERUP Event April 7

If you’re a technician or operations specialist at an industrial company, sign up for GrayMatter’s next virtual training event, emPOWERUP.virtual on April 7.

GrayMatter’s emPOWERUP events are built for technicians focused on industrial operations at manufacturing companies, water and wastewater utilities, energy production companies, consumer packaged goods producers, and similar end-user clients.

Who Should Attend: controls systems engineers, process controls engineers, project engineers, SCADA coordinators, technicians, application analysts, data science managers

We have dozens of operational technology professionals already registered for the all-digital version of our popular seminar. Operators who attend come away with a better understanding of their company’s cybersecurity preparedness, edge computing best practices, high-performance graphics and the latest software solutions in HMI/SCADA from GE Digital.

Sign up here.