How information provides insights and changes behaviors

The challenge of gathering historical and real-time data is to provide that data back to the user in a way that provides insights. This can be accomplished by providing thought-out dashboards and reports to key operational personnel and managers.

By John Boyd, Maverick Technologies June 16, 2015

We tend to put a lot of effort into gathering historical and real-time data in the industrial process environment. The challenge is to provide that data back to the user in a way that provides insights into historically and current performance. This can be accomplished by providing thoroughly thought-out dashboards and reports to key operational personnel and managers. It is amazing what behaviors that can be changed in a processing environment if they have the right insights.

My brother recently purchased a new vehicle that happened to be all electric, and the information and insights it has been designed to provide are amazing. I was surprised to see the changes in my brother’s driving habits when his dashboard provided information on how his actions impacted the battery life and range of the vehicle.  

He started rolling down the windows instead of running the air (not necessarily a good thing for me as the passenger on a hot California day…) and reducing his speed once he realized how much it impacted the range of his vehicle. His actions in his vehicle made me realize how much properly designed informational dashboards can provide insights and thus change a person’s behavior, which can also improve your operations once your staff have more insights into your process.

What behavioral changes have you seen after improving dashboards and reports?

This post was written by John Boyd. John is a technology leader at MAVERICK Technologies, a leading automation solutions provider offering industrial automation, strategic manufacturing, and enterprise integration services for the process industries. MAVERICK delivers expertise and consulting in a wide variety of areas including industrial automation controls, distributed control systems, manufacturing execution systems, operational strategy, business process optimization and more.

MAVERICK Technologies is a CSIA member as of 3/20/2015