Information Modeling As a Tool for Collaboration

 In the spirit of the upcoming holiday season, let's take a moment to examine one of the greatest and most appreciable qualities of a healthy organization: collaboration. In a world so full of information, where we are all so busy and so pressed for time, it seems collaboration has become something done more out of necessity than out of a desire for quality and efficiency.

Some of this reality may be because there simply are no good tools for collaboration in the modern workplace. Sure, we have email and teleconferencing, web meetings, and text messages - but for all of our technology, our endless need to compartmentalize and segment our business processes has left us no closer to a model of organic collaboration than we were in the past.

With relevant information stored in separate silos, decision-makers are still forced to rely on reports and statistics compiled from historical data and interpreted to support a specific agenda. There have been no truly organic means of analyzing real-time data alongside the historical data. Likewise, the available tools for integrating data from separate systems are limited in terms of their ability to create a real-time context and to display the appropriate data to decision-makers at the speed with which decisions must often be made.

While these tools may be useful for looking back and analyzing what has happened, it is another matter altogether when trying to look forward to making plans or predicting outcomes.

Information Modeling

One of the ways this challenge can be overcome is by using an information model to organize and structure your organization's data in a way that provides context and clarity in real-time. Information modeling allows assets to be associated with all relevant information - regardless of where that information may reside.

For instance, a motor on your plant floor can have live data related to its RPM, temperature, throughput, or other process data - as well as a commission date, a maintenance schedule, troubleshooting documents, and training videos. Properties of this motor can also include OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency), Net Asset Value, or other performance and resource planning metrics. Some of this data may be coming from PLCs, some from databases like SQL Server, some from user input, and other data is coming from programmed calculations. In this situation, it is not important how this data is generated or where it is stored. What is important is that this data can be visualized at any time in whatever way suits your collaborative needs.

There are some different tools that can be used to create an information model for your organization. A few things to consider when choosing an information modeling tool:

  • Does the modeling software take into account both real-time AND historical data?
  • Does the modeling software allow you to include ALL relevant information from every source?
  • Is your modeled data logged in a relational database like SQL Server so it can be queried if additional information is needed?
  • Does your modeling software provide the tools you need to visualize your data in a useful way that supports decision-making?

Before you jump into a new software product and a new data management system, do some homework. As with everything there are pros and cons to the different products available.

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