ARMONK, N.Y., March 21, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new business consulting services and software that, together, help C-Suite decision makers predict and prevent damaging supply chain disruptions.

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Through IBM's predictive analytics software and business consulting services, the new solution harnesses big data from instrumented assets and identifies irregularities in the manufacturing process, spots product irregularities, and forecasts a range of asset performance risks before a problem ever arises.

Operating, maintaining, and managing assets throughout their lifecycle is a massive built-in expense, made even more critical by the frequency of unpredicted, catastrophic machine failures. Asset downtime, especially, if unplanned, is a multi-million dollar issue for organizations; and the related unscheduled maintenance costs can range from three to 10 times the cost of scheduled maintenance. 

"The world is entering a new era of smart - where decisions will be based on facts, data, and increasingly on the ability to apply analytics to massive data sets and extract very precise business insights," said Fred Balboni, senior partner, Big Data Analytics, IBM Global Business Services.  "Companies realize they have a new opportunity to capitalize on big data to address some of the intractable issues of the past, drive new levels of business efficiency, and create new levels of value for their customers. Our data shows us that businesses that are applying analytics to structured and unstructured data are outperforming their competitors in every industry."

Envision the myriad of components that combine to form the complex automobile manufacturing line. How can a decision maker know when it's time to replace any one of the thousands of machine parts, robots or sensors; and beyond that, how the line – or an oil rig, or a piece of heavy equipment -- can be taken off line for maintenance with minimal economic impact? IBM's new solution will uncover these data-driven insights, examining both static and streaming information, combined with analysis of asset sensors correlated with domains such as environmental and facilities monitoring systems.

This new integrated solution analyzes big data from multiple static and streaming sources to make informed decisions by generating predictive statistical models to predict equipment failure conditions and create alerts.  The alerts are then displayed on an employee or manager's tablet, smart phone or browser with recommended corrective actions that should be taken through interactive tools that perform root cause analytics and process improvements.

This new offering is intended to help clients in the Automotive, Electronics, Aerospace, Defense, Manufacturing, Mining, Transportation, Telecommunications and Energy and Utilities industries.  For example:

• In the City of Cambridge, Ontario, the transportation and public works department found itself less able to complete inspections and preventive maintenance because its resources were increasingly being used to respond to emergency repair calls.  The city established a division devoted to asset management and with the help of IBM analytics they are evolving from a break-fix mode of operation moving toward more proactive, industry based practices to boost the quality of city services and address infrastructure sustainability.
• A global auto manufacturer was looking to improve its production quality.  With IBM analytics the company was able to use real-time data to monitor the production quality and more quickly identify and resolve issues.  This resulted in a reduced the defect rate by 50 percent in 16 weeks in the production of their cylinder heads and increased customer satisfaction.
• Another global manufacturing company was looking to more quickly detect part defects.  Through IBM analytics the company implemented an early detection model and is now saving $130M on warranty costs per year.
• A regional utility company needed to maintain an aging infrastructure.  By implementing IBM predictive analytics technology into their supply chain processes they can now detect potential problems before they occur, and have seen 20 percent productivity gains for service trucks and up to 20 percent reduction of fuel costs due to fewer truck rolls.

Armed with facts on equipment performance, organizations across a range of industries will anticipate potential failures in their manufacturing systems, supply chains and distribution networks before something goes wrong -- and improve operational efficiency as well as customer satisfaction with proactive responses that prevent or minimize potential issues.

"Analytics technology gives us valuable insight into trends and what we can expect in the future," said Michael Hausser, Director of Asset Management and Supporting Services, Transportation and Public Works Department, City of Cambridge.  "We were heading toward a point where reliability of service would be reduced and we'd be beyond our resource capacity to re-actively resolve issues in a timely manner.  We are in transition to be more proactive and gain efficiencies in day to day maintenance management activities."

IBM Signature Solution – Predictive Asset Optimization

According to engineering estimates, the U.S. will need to spend $2.2 trillion over the next five years just to bring national infrastructures up to date.  This includes improvements to roads, bridges, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, telecommunications and more.  Understanding the data about those systems, and generated by those systems, has never been more urgent.   

IBM is introducing new capabilities through its Predictive Asset Optimization solution, that provides deeper insights into the health of an organization's assets by proactively maintaining and reducing operation and maintenance costs This broadens IBM's capabilities and portfolio of IBM Signature Solutions, that take the power of predictive analytics to new levels of impact for the highest-priority issues of C-suite decision makers.

The Predictive Asset Optimization solution is implemented by IBM business consultants, supported by industry-leading applications management services capabilities, and cloud offerings. These capabilities are supported by IBM's Big Data technology platform that includes Hadoop, stream computing, data warehouse, and information integration and governance capabilities, along with visualization and discovery, application development, systems management and industry accelerators. To date, the IBM Big Data platform has been adopted by more than 100 business partners, bringing a new class of analytics solutions to market and extending the reach of IBM analytics offerings for clients.

The new solution will be one of the first capabilities offered to clients at the new Advanced Analytics Center in Columbus, Ohio. Credit qualified clients can take advantage of financing for services solutions and zero percent loans for IBM software with IBM Global Financing.

IBM Signature Solutions

IBM Signature Solutions are a portfolio of outcome-based analytic offerings that include fraud detection, financial optimization and customer next best action solutions. They are built with IBM's global team of researchers, software developers and business consultants.

These new capabilities are part of IBM's larger focus on big data and analytics that spans hardware, software, services and research. IBM has completed more than 30,000 analytics client engagements and projects $20 billion in business analytics and big data revenue by 2015.

IBM has established the world's deepest portfolio of analytics solutions; deploys 9,000 business analytics consultants and 400 researchers, and has acquired more than 30 companies since 2005 to build targeted expertise in this area. 

IBM secures hundreds of patents a year in big data and analytics, and converts this deep intellectual capital into breakthrough capabilities, including Watson-like cognitive systems. The company has established a global network of nine IBM Client Centers for Smarter Analytics and goes to market with more than 27,000 IBM business partners

For more information about IBM and Analytics, please visit: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/27163.wss

IBM YouTube Analytics Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ibmbusinessanalytics

For more information about how City of Cambridge, Ontario is using IBM analytics, please visit: http://ibm.co/ZWf26I

Media Contacts:

Lia P. Davis
IBM Media Relations
1- 202-285-5333
lia.p.davis@us.ibm.com

Kristine A. Nalbone
IBM Media Relations
1- 917-472-3656
knalbon@us.ibm.com  

SOURCE IBM