Innovation Group
Analytics proof of concept, then production
Most new analytics ideas die in a slide deck or a notebook. We test yours on your own data and tools, drop the dead ends early, and turn the ones that work into software people use.
Make it work, then make it usable
We check that the answer is right before we spend money on screens and deployment, then design with the people who will use it.
Start on your stack
Python, KNIME, Power BI, Databricks or Siemens software. We prototype in what your team already runs.
Work with the users
We sit with operators, planners and managers to learn what they need to decide, and keep checking with them as we build.
Decide early
A proof of concept ends with a clear call: advance it, or drop it before it eats the budget.
Rebuild the winners
What works gets rebuilt as a production app, with the plumbing that makes it last: screens, workflows, reports and deployment.
Kinds of problems we take on
For the past decade our Innovation Group has worked as a standing partner to large manufacturers, closing scores of projects every "semester". A sample:
- Long-range capacity planning: multi-year facility and equipment plans.
- Staffing: workforce models and scheduling tools for managers.
- Warehouse sizing: DC capacity and layout.
- Quality: sampling-rate tools, anomaly detection on process data, vision-based checks.
- Material and energy use: scrap and usage tracking with reporting leaders can read.
- Workflow automation: process and control systems with screens operators find easy to use.
- Data models people can use: analytics frameworks that report in business language.
- Big data validation: quality checks on the data itself, built for quality managers.
We mix whatever fits: simulation (including discrete rate, which we started), optimization, statistics and machine learning.
"The SDI team went above and beyond the project scope, proactively brainstorming ways to make our project better."
J Adam Traina, Director of Operations Research, Symbotic. Read the warehouse case.
More on the Innovation Group: the team and its toolbox, and the seven steps from idea to production, with the ways an idea gets delivered.
Tell us your problem
What would happen if you changed it?
Describe the decision in front of you. We'll tell you whether a model can answer it, and what it would take.
- A straight answer on whether simulation is the right tool
- Which tool fits, even if it isn't one we use every day
- A rough scope and timeline, before any commitment