Data cloud firm Snowflake has launched the Manufacturing Data Cloud, which enables companies in automotive, technology, energy, and industrial sectors to unlock the value of their critical siloed industrial data by leveraging Snowflake’s data platform, Snowflake- and partner-delivered solutions, and industry-specific datasets.
The Manufacturing Data Cloud empowers manufacturers to collaborate with partners, suppliers, and customers in a secure and scalable way, driving greater agility and visibility across the entire value chain. With Snowflake’s Manufacturing Data Cloud, organisations can build a data foundation for their business, improve supply chain performance, and power smart manufacturing initiatives in today’s digital-industrial world.
Manufacturers face an increasingly complex and competitive landscape, where supply chain performance and factory efficiency are critical to success. Fragility has been exposed in supply chains and digitisation continues to be a massive opportunity to drive visibility into the supply chain and factory floor. As manufacturers look to address these issues, their efforts around modernisation and resiliency require data and a willingness to embrace industry 4.0 initiatives, in which data is collected from sensor networks and smart machines and filtered through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Traditionally, these data sets, which encompass both operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) data, have been siloed and difficult to access and integrate.
The Snowflake Manufacturing Data Cloud enables manufacturers to address these industry challenges by:
- Building a data foundation: The Snowflake Manufacturing Data Cloud offers a single, fully-managed, secure platform for multi-cloud data consolidation with unified governance and elastic performance that supports virtually any scale of storage, compute, and users. It allows manufacturers to break down data silos by ingesting both IT and OT data and analysing it alongside third-party partner data.
- Improving supply chain performance: Enable seamless data sharing and collaboration with partners for downstream and upstream visibility across an organisation’s entire supply chain coupling its own data with data from third-party partners and data from Snowflake Marketplace. By leveraging this data with SQL and Snowpark, Snowflake’s developer framework for Python, Java, and Scala, different teams can collaborate on the same data and build AI and ML models with confidence to forecast demand and enable critical use cases like supply chain control tower and spend analytics.
- Powering smart manufacturing: Native support for semi-structured, structured, and unstructured high-volume Internet of Things (IoT) data in Snowflake enables manufacturers to keep operations running remotely by streamlining operations within and across manufacturing plants, while also leveraging shop floor data in near real-time to predict maintenance needs, analyse cycle time, improve product yield and quality, and meet sustainability goals.
- Leveraging industry-leading network of manufacturing partners: Take advantage of a rich partner ecosystem and industry-specific, prebuilt templates to drive innovation, reduce time to value, and build more valuable solutions.
Tim Long, global head of manufacturing at Snowflake. , said: “Data has never been more critical as manufacturers embrace smart manufacturing initiatives and steer their companies into an increasingly digital-industrial world.
“The Snowflake Manufacturing Data Cloud and our ecosystem of partners gives manufacturers and their suppliers access to the data, applications, and services needed to effectively manage end-to-end supply chains, create new shop floor efficiencies, and deliver better products and services to their customers.”
Manufacturing Data Cloud Partner Solutions
Within the Manufacturing Data Cloud, Snowflake’s ecosystem of manufacturing partners includes:
- Applications Powered by Snowflake, including ones developed by Blue Yonder, Elementum, and Avetta, give manufacturers the ability to manage their supply chain with control towers, data-driven workflows, and measure risk across third-party contractors and suppliers.
- Snowflake Marketplace partners, including FourKites and Yes Energy, and data provider S&P Global, enable live access to a variety of data sources leveraging Snowflake’s privacy-preserving collaboration technology, to analyse ESG, supply chain disruptions, and market forecasts.
- Consulting and service organisations including Deloitte, EY, LTIMindtree, and phData, offer pre-built solutions for top priority use cases, including integrating yield analysis, shop floor visibility, energy management, and supply chain visibility.
- Technology leaders, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Fivetran and Tableau, provide integrations and out-of-the-box solutions so customers can attain deeper insights and realise the full power and ease of use of the Manufacturing Data Cloud.
Some of the largest, global manufacturing organisations are already using the Snowflake Manufacturing Data Cloud.
Customer use cases include:
- ABB – The technology leader in electrification and automation is using Snowflake to unify all of its data, including incoming raw materials from suppliers, plant production capacity, and sales orders, to streamline manufacturing operations and meet customer demand.
- EDF – The energy supplier for homes and businesses across the UK used Snowflake and its Snowpark Python development framework to build a complete machine learning operation solution in a few months, and deliver data products that lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention.
- Molex – A leading manufacturer of connectors, is using the Snowflake Manufacturing Data Cloud to fuel their digital transformation journey, including sharing data securely across the organisation and with external partners and generating manufacturing shop-floor and business KPIs.
- Scania – The truck, bus, and industrial engine manufacturer uses Snowflake to continuously stream data from 600,000 connected vehicles and Snowpark for Python to prepare data for machine learning, which gives the company a comprehensive view for monitoring vehicle performance and supporting Scania’s product-related services.
Peter Alåsen, Product Owner, Scania, said: “Snowflake’s Manufacturing Data Cloud has provided the data foundation we needed to unlock insights from the 150 million streaming messages we received from our fleet of 600,000 vehicles.
“With Snowflake, we’ve been able to reduce downtime for customers by recommending maintenance based on vehicle operation and workshop availability, while also increasing revenue-generating activities around service and with other digital or physical services.”
