Unlocking Hidden Value: Implementing Unstructured Data Utilization Strategies in Manufacturing

Unstructured data refers to manufacturing data that isn’t formatted or organized enough to make it a useful asset. Identifying unstructured data and finding an efficient way to make it into an asset is one of the most impactful ways to improve the efficiency and consistency of your processes.

In the manufacturing industry, we live in a world brimming with data. From sophisticated ERP systems to modern 3D CAD models, information is generated at every turn of the production lifecycle. Yet, despite this wealth of structured data, a significant portion of invaluable information often remains locked away in formats that traditional systems can't easily process or analyze. This is your unstructured data, and learning how to effectively utilize it is one of the most impactful strategies for unlocking hidden value in your operations.

The Dusty Corners of Manufacturing Data

Think about the decades of work that have passed through your shop. Where does the critical knowledge from those projects live? Often, it resides in legacy drawings on paper or scanned PDFs, sometimes with handwritten notes scribbled in the margins. Then there's the tribal knowledge – the insights, shortcuts, and lessons learned by experienced engineers and procurement leaders over thirty years, often stored only in their minds or personal records.

This unstructured data holds tremendous value. It contains the history of your product development, variations in designs, successful past practices, and the nuances of working with specific suppliers or materials. Referencing this historical data, even 2D drawings from twenty years ago, is crucial for future innovations. However, this information is effectively "trapped”, difficult to access, share, and analyze consistently when it's isolated in physical storage, incompatible digital formats, or individual memories.

This inability to leverage unstructured data leads to inefficiencies. Teams might waste hours manually searching for old drawings, or attempting to recreate processes based on fading memories. Crucial insights remain siloed within departments or even individuals. When experienced personnel retire, valuable tribal knowledge can be lost forever, hindering knowledge transfer to new hires.

Turning Dust into Digital Gold: Strategies for Utilization

Implementing unstructured data utilization strategies is about transforming this scattered knowledge and data into assets that anyone who needs the information can access, analyze, and utilize. The foundational steps involve:

1. Digitalization

 The first necessary step is making sure your data is in a digital format. This includes scanning old paper drawings and documents.

2. Data Extraction

Once digital, the next challenge is extracting the meaningful information trapped within these files – the text, dimensions, notes, and even shapes. Technologies like Optical Character Recognition (OCR) are essential here to read text, including handwritten notes, from scanned images and PDFs.

3. Consolidation & Linking

Extracted data needs to be consolidated. A data lake is an ideal repository that can collect data from diverse sources, including your digitized unstructured data and existing systems like PLM, ERP, and CAD. Crucially, the system needs to link this newly accessible unstructured data (like a drawing) to related structured data (like cost, supplier, or quality information) from other systems.

4. Making it Searchable & Insightful
   

Finally, this consolidated and linked data must be easily searchable. Beyond keyword search for extracted text, advanced methods like searching by the design or shape of a part allow intuitive access based on the physical characteristics of the part itself. Surfacing contextual data automatically around search results enhances understanding and decision-making.

Executing these steps manually can be incredibly time-consuming and resource-intensive, particularly the extraction and linking of data from disparate, unstructured sources. This is where purpose-built technology becomes a game-changer.

Leveraging AI to Empower Your Unstructured Data

The good news is that new AI technology can analyze drawings on its own. Modern manufacturing intelligence platforms are specifically designed to tackle the challenges of unstructured data head-on. They don't replace human expertise; they enhance it by making decades of hidden knowledge accessible and actionable.

CADDi Drawer is one such platform that functions as a state-of-the-art enterprise search solution for manufacturing data. It batch processes your past drawing data, whether produced by CAD or scanned from hand-drafted paper. Using its proprietary OCR-based AI technology, CADDi Drawer automatically extracts and digitizes non-structural data, even handwritten text, from legacy drawings.

This makes your entire archive, even from 30+ years ago, fully searchable and comparable. CADDi doesn't stop there. It incorporates data from your PLM, ERP, and other systems into a comprehensive data lake, automatically linking supply chain data like cost, quality, supplier information, and manufacturing notes to each drawing. This provides crucial context and a "single source of truth”.

The power of CADDi lies in its patented visual and similarity search technology. Instead of trying to remember arbitrary IDs or labeling language, you can search by sketching, uploading an image, or analyzing the components of the part itself. CADDi instantly finds all similar drawings, even accounting for slight revisions.

This ability to search and link data based on the drawing itself is revolutionary. It allows you to quickly find past designs to reuse or modify, compare costs for similar parts across suppliers, and identify opportunities for design standardization or VAVE. It turns new hires into experts faster by providing them with the context and history veterans carry. It shaves hours off searching for old drawings, accelerating design and quoting processes.

By making your unstructured data searchable, insightful, and actionable, CADDi empowers your teams to make smarter, faster decisions across procurement, engineering, and sales. It’s the bridge that connects your valuable historical data to your future success.

See how CADDi can help you unlock the hidden value in your unstructured data and drive digital transformation. Sign up for a personalized demo or walk through our self-directed product tour.

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