SAS Offers Manufacturers Early-Warning Analytics

Business intelligence vendor SAS is offering manufacturers early-warning analytics to help reduce the amount of wasted materials and defective products.

The SAS Quality Lifecycle Analysis software was introduced last week at the Premier Business Leadership Series, a SAS-sponsored business conference in Las Vegas, Nev. The new product uses early-warning analytics to monitor thousands of parameters and send automated alerts to warn of product defects and potential failures in the manufacturing process before they become costly problems, the company said.

Quoting a study from Industry Week magazine and the Manufacturing Performance Institutue, SAS claims manufacturers spend an average of about 4% of overall plant sales on materials and defective products that are thrown away.

In attacking the problem, SAS's latest software provides reporting, monitoring and alerting based on a quality-centric data model that provides logical and physical storage capabilities. The model captures all aspects of the manufacturing process from suppliers through manufacturing, field performance and post-sales quality variables.

The software also offers predictive models that enable manufacturers to set up downstream processes to compensate for quality issues that may not have been identified earlier in the operation or that were identified as a result of upstream analysis. In addition the product has an interactive graphical interface that provides operational visibility and Web-based clients that deliver standard and ad-hoc reports, KPI scorecards, drill-down views, snapshots and trend analysis.

Customers of SAS's latest software includes BGF Industries, which manufacturers materials used in hot gas filtration systems, aircraft and automotive parts, ballistic vehicle armor, bullet-proof vests and other products. BGF, which has more than $200 million in sales, has been a SAS customer since 1982.

"The early-warning system we built with SAS allowed us to go from nothing to everything," Bobby Hull, a BGF systems analyst, said in a statement. "SAS allows us to focus away from clerical tasks to focus on the quality and process side of the job."

SAS Quality Lifecycle Analysis is generally available. Pricing was not disclosed.