Smart Oil Fields and Recalls: (Mis)using Your Noodle [Roundup]

What kind of logistical effort does it take to track down and destroy 400 million packets of instant noodles?

As you might imagine--a very large one. More in this week's round-up.

IBM Watson and the 'Smart' Oil Refinery

Australian energy company Woodside Energy has implemented IBM's Watson cognitive computing services in its facilities in an effort to disseminate the knowledge of its senior engineers throughout the organization. The two companies' partnership is aimed at creating a search engine, or "cognitive advisory service" that allows Woodside's engineering teams to ask complex questions about facilities management and design to periodically improve efficiency. When Watson is asked a complex question, it probes its memory banks to return what it considers a relevant set of answers. With time, it will be able to improve the quality of its answers based on user feedback. The energy industry has been an early adopter of IBM Watson and its advanced machine learning technologies. Full story here...

Nestle to Recall 400 Million Noodle Packets in India Due to Lead Level Concerns

There's no denying that the auto industry has had some high-profile recalls recently, but in terms of sheer volume, Nestle SA's current recall of its very popular Maggi instant noodle product in India has the industry beat my a substantial margin. After a criminal complaint alleging dangerously high levels of lead in product samples, the company is being forced to recall 400 million packets of Maggi across the country, a monumental feat considering the volume and distribution involved. So far Nestle has hired 2,500 trucks to visit its 38 distribution centers. Before the recall, an estimated 5% of the noodles were in Nestle factories, 33% in distribution centers, 26% with distributors, and 37% in the market. It estimates that finding and destroying all the packets will take 40 days. A look at some of the projected numbers involved here...

SAP Announces Next Release of SAP HANA and Predictive Analytics Software

In a move that advances the Internet of Things capability discussion, earlier this week SAP made two announcements of technology releases aimed at helping customers extend IoT capabilities and better handle the type of data flows resulting from IoT and Big Data.

In Nice, France, SAP announced an update to the SAPA HANA platform, intended to enhance customers' ability to connect to the Internet of Things (IoT) at the enterprise scale. Along with facilitating this IoT connection, SAP's service pack 10 capabilities are aimed at helping customers better manage Big Data, extend data availability across the enterprise, and develop new applications. At the same time SAP also announced the next version of its Predictive Analytics software, which aims to extend the power of predictive analytics through ultra-wide datasets and those containing Big Data and IoT data streams. Said Steve Lewis, President of Platform Solutions, SAP, "There is immense, untapped value in data and a huge opportunity to translate that value into tangible business outcomes. By accessing and analyzing data we help out customers identify trends that reveal new markets, channels, and innovations. More here and here...

The Importance of Getting Your EQMS on the Right Track from the Start

As operations across industry verticals have ramped up in speed and complexity, driven by technology advancements like Cloud, Big Data, the IoT, and Mobile, the pressure on quality to keep pace has been enormous. Today many companies have really begun to grasp the value that Enterprise Quality Management Software (EQMS) delivers in standardizing and integrating key processes across facilities. Indeed, our recent research shows that nearly a third of respondents (1,200 total) have seen their EQMS budget increased by 20% or more over the last year. But while EQMS is becoming more and more critical to quality success, the importance of selecting the right solution for an organization is also being underscored, as many companies stall in their plans, or worse--fail outright. In our upcoming webinar on July 14 at 1:00 pm EDT, LNS Research Analyst Rob Harrison will present a step-by-step guide to assist quality professionals in ensuring that each phase of the process, from initial project scope, to shortlist, to selection, is given proper attention for maximal chance of success.