Snowflake has launched a Manufacturing Data Cloud to allow industrial companies to unify their data. The Snowflake platform allows industrial data held in siloed repositories and industrial systems to be consolidated within a cloud-based data warehouse.

According to the company, with Snowflake’s Manufacturing Data Cloud, organisations can build a data foundation for their business, improve supply chain performance, and enable smart manufacturing initiatives.

The Manufacturing Data Cloud is designed to address fragility within supply chains and manufacturing processes. Snowflake argues that manufacturers’ efforts around modernisation and resiliency require data and a willingness to embrace industry 4.0 initiatives, in which data is collected from sensor networks and smart machines and filtered through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Such data sets encompass both operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) data which have been siloed and are difficult to access and integrate.

The Snowflake Manufacturing Data Cloud helps manufacturers to build a data foundation by providing a single, fully-managed, secure platform for multi-cloud data consolidation with unified governance and elastic performance that supports almost any scale of storage, compute, and users.

It allows manufacturers to break down data silos by ingesting both IT and OT data and analysing it alongside third-party partner data. This helps it improve supply chain performance by enabling data sharing and collaboration with partners for downstream and upstream visibility across an organisation’s entire supply chain, coupling its own data with data from third-party partners and data from Snowflake Marketplace.

Leveraging industrial data with SQL and Snowpark, Snowflake’s developer framework for Python, Java, and Scala, different teams can collaborate on the same industrial and enterprise data sets and build AI and ML models with confidence to forecast demand and enable use cases like supply chain control tower and spend analytics.

The platform is designed to enable smart manufacturing with native support for semi-structured, structured, and unstructured high-volume Internet of Things (IoT) data. This enables manufacturers to keep operations running remotely by streamlining operations within and across manufacturing plants, while also leveraging shop floor data in near real-time to predict maintenance needs, analyse cycle time, improve product yield and quality, and meet sustainability goals.

“Data has never been more critical as manufacturers embrace smart manufacturing initiatives and steer their companies into an increasingly digital-industrial world,” said Tim Long, Global Head of Manufacturing at Snowflake. “The Snowflake Manufacturing Data Cloud and our ecosystem of partners gives manufacturers and their suppliers access to the data, applications, and services needed to effectively manage end-to-end supply chains, create new shop floor efficiencies, and deliver better products and services to their customers.”

Within the Manufacturing Data Cloud, Snowflake’s ecosystem of manufacturing partners includes applications powered by snowflake, including ones developed by Blue Yonder, Elementum, and Avetta, give manufacturers the ability to manage their supply chain with control towers, data-driven workflows, and measure risk across third-party contractors and suppliers.

The platform also includes Snowflake marketplace partners, including FourKites, Yes Energy, and data provider S&P Global, enable live access to a variety of data sources leveraging Snowflake’s privacy-preserving collaboration technology, to analyse ESG, supply chain disruptions, and market forecasts.

Platform consulting and service organisations including Deloitte, EY, LTIMindtree, and phData, offer pre-built solutions for top priority use cases, including integrating yield analysis, shop floor visibility, energy management, and supply chain visibility.

Companies already using the platform include ABB, EDF, Molex and Scania.

ABB is using Snowflake to unify all of its data, including incoming raw materials from suppliers, plant production capacity, and sales orders, to streamline manufacturing operations and meet customer demand.

Energy supplier EDF UK is using Snowflake and its Snowpark Python development framework to build a complete machine learning operation solution in a few months, and deliver data products that lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention.

Molex is using the Snowflake Manufacturing Data Cloud to fuel their digital transformation journey, including sharing data securely across the organisation and with external partners and generating manufacturing shop-floor and business KPIs.

Commercial vehicle manufacturer Scania uses Snowflake to continuously stream data from 600,000 connected vehicles and Snowpark for Python to prepare data for machine learning, which gives the company a comprehensive view for monitoring vehicle performance and supporting Scania’s product-related services.

“Snowflake’s Manufacturing Data Cloud has been crucial in helping ABB modernise and unlock the end-to-end business insights we need to become a more data-driven enterprise,” said Babu Kuttala, Chief Data and Analytics Officer of ABB. “With greater insights into available raw materials from vendors, factory capacity, and incoming sales orders, ABB has built a more resilient supply chain and factory floor and enabled us to better meet customer demand.”

“A modern data platform with the Manufacturing Data Cloud has enabled our organisation to spend less time wrestling with data management and governance,” said Rebecca Vickery, Data Science Lead, EDF. “With Snowflake, we’re focused on building models and generating insights to help power our general operations, which enables us to deliver data products and services that lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention, and help Britain achieve net zero.”

“Snowflake’s Manufacturing Data Cloud has provided the data foundation we needed to unlock insights from the 150 million streaming messages we received from our fleet of 600,000 vehicles,” said Peter Alåsen, Product Owner, Scania. “With Snowflake, we’ve been able to reduce downtime for customers by recommending maintenance based on vehicle operation and workshop availability, while also increasing revenue-generating activities around service and with other digital or physical services.”