Athulan Vijayaraghavan, CTO and co-founder of VIMANA wrote a column for Modern Machine Shop, which can be found here.
Note: VIMANA was previously named System Insights.
He argues that when we think of data-driven manufacturing, we shouldn’t forget about the human consuming that data, since the kind of data one needs depends upon who is using it.
“A lot of the discussion about data-driven manufacturing has been focused on software for collecting, analyzing and managing data from devices and sensors on the shop floor. While data from these sources is critical for data-driven manufacturing, we should not forget the most important source—and consumer—of data in a manufacturing system, the human-in-the-loop.” — Human in the Loop, Modern Machine Shop
In this article, pertinence, context, and ubiquity are listed as some of the considerations for presenting information to the data consumer, which can include operators, programmers, maintenance engineers, or production supervisors. When considering the human-in-the-loop as a source of data, the same considerations need to be kept in mind while capturing information from a skilled operator or engineer who is part of the manufacturing process.
