Business Intelligence (BI) - an impressive tool for analyses & sustainable process improvements

In our projects, we always try to align our team to the customers needs.  In 2017, we hired a former Airbus colleague for one of our crisis management challenges at a German aerospace supplier (Tier 1).  Prior to that, she worked for a large international management consultancy. Right at the beginning of our project, she asked us if we had ever thought about using "business intelligence tools".    

We had no idea and she explained their usefulness for analysing large amounts of data (Big Data).  One of the team members - our logistics and IT expert - immediately started trying out the recommended QlikSense BI desktop version for analysing flow disturbances in manufacturing.  Quite quickly, thanks to the improved transparency of the data, we found an important driver that neither our client nor we had been aware of before.

Since then, we have been using BI for our analyses across all important processes. One of the big concerns in the project was material supply at the beginning of the value stream.  We developed a series of charts and built in some logic to identify critical missing parts in the future on a daily basis.  Our customer realised that he could use our tools himself for his daily work.

Today, our main focus in our projects is to create transparency at critical points in the value chain.  We propose the dashboard with the relevant metrics, test and adapt it with key users and make it available in the organisation. The biggest advantage is the improved transparency throughout the organisation.  A disruption is now visible to everyone who has access to the tool. This creates the attention needed to solve problems faster than before.

The following film shows you the above example where we developed a BI application to improve transparency in the supply chain process.