consideration. Your organisation has invested time and money into building the ProcessBook displays essential to efficient operations. Certain ProcessBook alternatives provide tools to simply migrate existing ProcessBook displays to your new platform. Others do not. Diagnostic analytics capabilities Diagnostic or ‘exploratory’ analytics tools are used for root cause investigation and troubleshooting of downtime events or product quality issues. Trends and trending capabilities are at the core of diagnostic analytics. Effective root cause analysis depends on rapid ad-hoc analysis and the ability to quickly overlay historical data from various process areas to determine correlation and causation. Trending is likely to be one of the top two capabilities ProcessBook users are looking to address with a replacement system. In addition to trends, diagnostic analytics are often supported by other visualisation tools, “Often used in relation to leading- edge manufacturing concepts, like machine learning and industrial AI, advanced analytics in ProcessBook replacement tools will typically take two forms: predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics.” such as histograms, X/Y charts, and Pareto charts. When presented with difficult process questions, the more ways you can slice and dice your data, the easier it will be to arrive at the correct answer. Operations management capabilities ‘Operations Management’ is broadly defined here as the capabilities that allow for: • Production tracking • Process monitoring • OEE tracking • Quality management • Process alarms and notifications • Reporting • Manual data entry That’s a lot of functionality, and most of it comes from dashboarding and process graphics- building tools that leverage process data for
real-time monitoring. Basic analytics solutions typically only allow for monitoring at the site level, but more sophisticated offerings allow enterprise-wide tracking of production KPIs across multiple sites. ProcessBook users have got the most mileage out of the platform’s dynamic, interactive graphics, and it’s not uncommon for displays built with ProcessBook to see a decade or more of continued use. When looking to replace ProcessBook’s operations management capabilities, you have a few options. You could look for point solutions designed specifically for that capability, like SSRS for reporting. You could find a highly customisable product that has coding capabilities, like ProcessBook. Alternatively, you could find a broad solution that has the building blocks necessary to solve multiple business needs. Advanced analytics capabilities Advanced analytics is another loaded term that we’ll define here for the purpose of this article. Often used in relation to leading- edge manufacturing concepts, like machine learning and industrial AI, advanced analytics in ProcessBook replacement tools typically take two forms: predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics. Predictive analytics tools promise to prevent downtime and improve OEE by building models from recorded data to anticipate and alert users to potential productivity loss. Prescriptive analytics take the next logical step and tell you which actions need to be taken to address predicted production issues. Together, and in conjunction with process automation tools, predictive and prescriptive analytics form a sort of elementary artificial intelligence used to maximise plant performance. Cost/pricing Cost will likely be a consideration as you look for ProcessBook alternatives. Pricing for these solutions is usually determined by features and the scope of implementation. Since most providers don’t publicly list their pricing, providing even ballpark figures will be difficult. However, there’s one key factor you should be aware of when evaluating pricing: the pricing model.
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