In the past, most companies would record their process trends with pen and paper. Operations staff would be tasked with recording this data and analyzing it manually for any deviations. Today, control systems can record these trends digitally, and most companies now have volumes of process data at their fingertips. However, the analysis is still conducted in much the same way, with operations staff manually identifying trends to pinpoint what caused a spike or deviation from a normal process.
While this is certainly better than studying paper charts, in the end, you’re still doing the same thing. You’re a human looking at a trend line on a graph. While this can still bring some things to light, there are much more advanced and beneficial ways to process this data. Enter artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.