Based on its recent analysis of the global market for foundational manufacturing analytics for Industry 4.0, Frost & Sullivan recognises Northwest Analytics (NWA) with the 2018 Global Enabling Technology Leadership Award. NWA’s commitment to offering industry-best solutions is evident in its introduction of the NWA Focus EMI, an analytics platform enabling existing and new analytics approaches, techniques, and packages, and serving as a gateway to Industry 4.0. It allows manufacturing enterprises to add Industry 4.0 technologies, such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), and simultaneously accelerates the overall return on investment (ROI).

“NWA Focus EMI’s is unique because its global analytics layer connects to all existing, disparate manufacturing process data sources, as well as processes the data generated by new Industry 4.0 technologies without replicating any of it,” said Sankara Narayanan Senior Industry Analyst. “This flexibility helps manufacturers drive their process improvement efforts, reduce costs, increase yields, improve overall quality, and address dynamic customer demands.”

The NWA Focus EMI platform allows other tools and techniques to sit on top of it to better tap into data. Once the processes running in a manufacturing environment have been controlled through its foundational analytics, other solutions will be able to pick up much more nuanced, faint signals out of the data in a more efficient manner. This is because the foundational analytics from NWA is a manufacturing-centered comprehensive analytics package that includes univariate/multivariate-based modeling, pattern, and trend detection statistical process control (SPC) analytics. In effect, a signal generated through NWA Focus EMI has a very low risk of being a false positive.

The foundational analytics can easily be applied everywhere and by everyone within the process environment, even by those that do not have specialized analytics knowledge. The easy-to-use, intuitive design of NWA Focus EMI appeals to users across all levels of the organization and requires minimal input from IT resources during installation and maintenance.

NWA Focus EMI represents the first truly scalable, real-time foundational manufacturing analytics platform that delivers transformative and tangible operational benefits that deliver significant and sustainable ROI.

NWA understands that visual representation of a plan and graphic indicators of performance are powerful purchase influencers. Therefore, it features role-specific or role-based dashboards that are configurable and visually appealing, and these deliver a superior user experience and ensure efficient tasking.

“Yet another differentiating feature of the NWA Focus EMI is its KnowledgeBase functional module, which automatically captures and organizes a range of proven manufacturing best practices and process solutions,” noted Sankara Narayanan. “Overall, the foundational analytics of NWA Focus EMI is a simple, customer-focused solution that provides most of the benefits manufacturers desire.”

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to a company that has developed a pioneering technology that not only enhances current products, but also enables the development of new products and applications. The award recognises the high market acceptance potential of the recipient’s technology.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.