Why Raven?

Lean manufacturing tools have steadily been digitized over the past few decades which has helped move manufacturers from instinct driven management to KPI driven management. While historical data are regularly presented to production workers during daily meetings or whiteboards, they do not guide actions to eliminate waste as it’s happening.

Smart manufacturing was supposed to improve the shop floor by providing timely guidance to workers but most initiatives focused on solving data collection challenges instead of guiding workers’ decision making. The disconnect has flood factory workers with charts, graphs, reports and dashboards resulting in lackluster gains in productivity.

Digitization has been happening for decades. Today, with the cloud, AI, IoT and mobile giving us real-time access to all of our data, rapid improvement was supposed to follow. Real-time data hasn’t delivered as promised. Labor productivity has barely improved in the past decade in spite of advancements in technology and substantial investment.

At Raven, we believe that the transition from historical data driven management to real-time data driven management requires a fundamentally different approach. We believe that smart manufacturing is about guiding workers to continuously take the right action to eliminate the biggest source of waste as it is happening.

Moving from historical data analysis and reporting to real-time guidance disregards two key facts:

1. Data needs to be complete and accurate and real-time means that engineers and managers have been cut out of the equation
2. People have a very small capacity to take in feedback in real-time.  Busy dashboards and endless alerts are not effective at driving the few key actions that will have the biggest impact on performance.

To improve with real-time data you need to start with complete data that you trust.  To provide value, this data must drive action.  These actions must either address the biggest source of inefficiency in the moment, or the biggest systemic inefficiencies.  This connection between trustworthy data and precise actions based on true insights is exactly what real-time guidance was supposed to provide.

Raven harnesses the power of your real-time data by collecting and cleaning data from your machines, operators and your ERP to capture a complete accounting of what is happening on your shop floor.   With this insights, leadership and support is guided to take actions in real-time to address your biggest issues. Your biggest systemic issues are highlighted through customized analysis quantifying the cost of your inefficiencies and capturing the ROI for your existing improvement efforts.