• Manpreet Kaur
• February 28, 2024
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How to setup a data warehouse for manufacturing data?

Data warehouses store data and facilitate quick analysis and reporting for actionable insights. With effective data warehouses, you can gather data from different data sources. In this blog, we’ll find out how manufacturing analytics companies can build a data warehouse for manufacturing data and gain relevant insights. Manufacturing organizations are undergoing transformational changes owing to the exponential growth of data. According to the IDC forecast, the global data sphere is expected to expand by 175 zettabytes by 2025. This massive growth indicates a data-driven world characterized by constant tracking and monitoring. Data plays an important role in highlighting areas for improvement, whether it’s inventory management, production, logistics, and warehouses. The challenge lies in collecting data in real-time and using it efficiently. By leveraging a data warehouse for manufacturing data, companies can store and process vast amounts of data with the help of manufacturing analytics solutions. What is data warehouse for manufacturing ? A data warehouse for a manufacturing company is a digital repository of disparate data sets. It gives a consolidated view of data from different systems such as operational and transactional data management. Manufacturing organizations collect information across different stages of their processes, such as product and process design, assembly, maintenance, and recycling. A data warehouse aggregates structured data from multiple sources, giving accurate data analysis.  How to create a data warehouse setup? Here is a quick overview of the steps of building a data warehouse for manufacturing companies Step 1: Understand business requirements  Note down the functional and non-functional requirements of your business according to their priority. For example, if your business will expand and grow in the immediate future, scalability must be your top priority. Figure out departmental goals and align them with the project. Assess the existing tech stack and data to get an idea of the current and future needs.  Step 2. Investigate source data Define all the data sources and identify the primary sources of record to prevent unnecessary data loading, since specific datasets might be present across multiple storage systems. For example, you can transfer the sales order information from the order management system to logistics software. However, the OMS serves as the single data source, since the logistics software may alter data, compromising the quality of insight.  Step 3. Develop conceptual, logical, and physical data models Once you have delineated all the business requirements, you need to create a preliminary enterprise data warehouse model to visualize and represent key business processes and their interrelationships. Make sure you build these models in collaboration with the domain experts to account for industry-specific subtleties.  Conceptual data models help to set up relationships among core business entities and outline the information needs of an organization. For instance, a supply chain company might identify entities such as products, customers, shippers, carriers, suppliers, orders, and manufacturers. Logical data models have more elaborate details such as attributes (columns) associated with each business entity. For example, the product’s price  Physical data models include primary and foreign keys. A primary key works as a unique identifier within a table, while a foreign key is inserted from one table to another to establish a relationship between tables. Since business operations evolve continuously, it’s imperative to ensure data models remain adaptable.  Step 4. Define and create a data warehouse schema Now you need to structure the final version of data modeling into a data warehousing schema. Select the most suitable schema from different schema types, consulting a software architect.  Step 5. Deploy a data warehouse architecture gradually  When you have a data warehouse schema in place, create a data warehouse architecture. Focus on factors such as cost, security, performance, and scalability to choose a flexible architecture according to business requirements.  What are the applications of data warehouses in manufacturing? Manufacturing production and distribution organizations centralize their data using a data warehouse, giving a comprehensive analysis to determine existing patterns and trends, forecast market shifts, pinpoint growth opportunities, identify areas for development, and facilitate strategic decision-making. They face critical decisions regarding in-house production and outsourcing that impact the industry. By using OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) tools within data warehouses, businesses can analyze trends, detect early indicators of potential challenges, and enhance decision-making.  Data warehouses monitor product shipments and portfolios, allowing companies to identify product lines and evaluate underperforming ones depending on customer feedback and historical performance metrics.  Characteristics of a Data Warehouse The main characteristics of data warehousing in the manufacturing industry typically include:  Subject-oriented In a data warehouse, decision-makers (stakeholders, executives, and leaders) analyze data by focusing on specific subject areas, by narrowing relevant data sets. This ensures a clear understanding and streamlined analysis by limiting unnecessary information. Data warehouses are organized on specific subject areas such as customer data and inventory to facilitate analysis.  Integrated Data warehouses from disparate sources within an organization are consolidated and standardized in a data warehouse to ensure consistency and coherence across complete datasets.  Time-variant Data warehouses store historical data over time, including a temporal element and spanning an extensive time horizon. The immutability of time elements is a crucial aspect of time variance and record key displays time variance.  Non-volatile Once data is uploaded in the data warehouse, data is updated to protect it from temporary changes. The data is in read-only form and allows only access and loading functions.  What are the four phases of data warehouse design? Manufacturing analytics companies implement the below phases to design data warehouses to ensure the effectiveness of infrastructure.   Offline operational database: In this first stage, data is transferred from operating systems to servers. This separation prevents any impact on the performance of the OS, enabling easy data loading, processing, and reporting.  Offline data warehouse: During this stage, data is updated periodically since the data is refreshed from the operational database.   Real-time data warehouse: At this stage, data warehouses are updated in real-time as transactions occur in the operational database. It involves event-based triggers that send notifications to update records accordingly.  Integrated data warehouse: All the transactions are updated