A Plain-Language Guide
What is business intelligence?
BI puts the right information in front of the right people at the right time. For a manufacturer, that means seeing where product and money are leaking while there is still time to act on it.
Simply Put
Most plants don't have a data problem.
They have plenty of data. It lives in the ERP, the scale system, the WMS, and a dozen spreadsheets, and nobody sees it in one place until month end.
BI fixes three things:
- 01
The right information
One source, one definition. Finance and Operations look at the same number.
- 02
To the right people
Each person sees what they need. Plant managers see their plant. Sensitive numbers stay with the people who should have them.
- 03
At the right time
Reports refresh on their own. No one spends Monday morning rebuilding last week.
What It Looks Like in a Plant
BI is not one dashboard. It is the answer to questions you already ask.
Loss and waste
Where is product leaving the building without being sold? Damages, donations, inventory adjustments, and customer credits, by account, by location, by month.
On time, in full
Are customers getting what they ordered, when they ordered it?
Yield
How much product did we get out versus what went in?
Margin
Which products and customers actually make money once waste and freight are counted?
Finance calls it shrink. Operations calls it waste. BI puts it in one report so both sides are talking about the same thing.
One Question, Three Answers
Here is why one definition matters.
Take six months of one manufacturer's customer orders and ask, “how often did we ship on time and in full?”
By units
~98%
By order lines
92.5%
By whole orders
68%
Same orders. Same data. Three honest answers. If sales quotes one and operations quotes another, the meeting turns into an argument about the number instead of a decision about the problem.
BI settles which number the business runs on, writes the rule down, and shows it the same way every time.
See the full OTIF breakdown →BI vs. Spreadsheets
Excel is a strong tool. It isn't going anywhere.
I use it daily. The trouble starts when a spreadsheet is asked to be the system of record.
BI and Excel work together. BI holds the governed data. Excel is still a fine place to work with it.
Spreadsheets
Business intelligence
Several "final" versions
One source everyone pulls from
Numbers don't always reconcile
Definitions are owned and consistent
Someone rebuilds it every week
Refreshes on a schedule
Shared by email attachment
Access set by role
Slows down as data grows
Built for millions of rows
Where It Pays Off
One definition. Then the fix.
A Pacific Northwest packaged food manufacturer had Finance, Operations, Sales, and Warehouse each counting loss and waste their own way. We aligned all four around one definition and one reconciled report, then ran the project to fix what it showed.
Read the case study →37.7%
Normalized year-over-year reduction in loss and waste
4 of 4
Loss accounts improved
BI Comes Before AI
AI is only as good as the data under it.
Everyone wants to put AI on their data. If the numbers don't reconcile today, AI will give you confident answers built on the same problem.
Clean, governed BI is the foundation. Once it's in place, AI can sit on top of it and answer questions in plain English, grounded in numbers the business already trusts.
Is your data ready for AI? →Common Questions
Quick answers
Is BI the same as Power BI?
Do we need an ERP first?
Where do we start?
The Newsletter
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Real examples of the numbers manufacturers argue about: loss and waste, OTIF, inventory accuracy, AI readiness. How each one is calculated, where it goes wrong, and what to do about it. Free, and you can unsubscribe anytime.
You talk to Mitch.
Start with the number that costs you money.
A 30-minute call. Bring the report nobody agrees on. We will show you where the definitions split and what one number would look like.
Prefer to call? 509-530-1312