In 2010, a colleague and I did some work with data for a customer that led them to land a new customer and it essentially doubled their business and required a new factory get built. Wow! I felt like we had really made a difference! Interestingly enough, the tool we used to help us with that work was the PI System by OSIsoft. I had worked with data my entire career but I think this was the first time that I really saw its power used for business gain.

 

Moving ahead to April of 2013, when I started as an Account Manager with OSIsoft, my first week was at their annual User’s Conference. I kept hearing all of these success stories from customers and thinking to myself "I want to be a part of those kinds of stories.” I just kept hearing how companies were saving millions of dollars through better and more proactive use of their data and I knew I wanted to be a part of that kind of business impact. I knew I wanted to help customers write those stories. As an account manager for OSIsoft, I kept talking with customers about how they could get more proactive use of their data by leveraging all the new tools that the PI System had, but I kept hearing objections like “we don’t have the time” or “we don’t have the resources.” It was almost never “we just don’t see the value.”

 

So many people I run into today are stretched so thin. They are working 50-60 hours a week, have competing priorities, are in meetings 70-80% of their day and are asked: “oh, by the way, get this project done with the latest technology ASAP.” It is not a pretty picture out there. Almost every company I run across has less staff than they did even 5 years ago, much less 20 years ago when I began my career. The velocity of technology and the demands on people’s performance is only increasing as well. Most people, if you get them talking, feel stressed, overworked, and not as productive as they would like to be.

 

The other trend that I see consistently in all industries is that there is a huge skills and experience gap coming. Many baby boomers are retiring within the next 5 years, or they already have retired, and there isn’t nearly enough experienced talent coming up through the ranks to fill the gap that they will be leaving. The only way in my mind to fill that gap is a translation of knowledge through data and more importantly, information. I recently heard a great analogy to this problem where the person I was talking with stated that we need to get this problem addressed “before the emperor has no clothes, and the emperor is half-naked now!” Almost every industry that I have worked in has this same issue.

 

There are also still too many industries that believe that what they make is more art than science. The truth is, most of those companies don’t have the data turned into information to understand the science behind what they make. There are yet other companies that know that there is a scientific reason for success in their manufacturing and have started down a path to better quantify how to be more successful in their processes, but still, have a long way to go. I want us to help companies like these, wherever they may be on their journey.

 

When I left OSIsoft in the early summer of 2015, I knew that there was much opportunity to help clients realize the power of using their data proactively because of what I was seeing. So many companies are data rich and information poor and many are struggling with a vision on how to not be information poor. Many are struggling with how to monetize this new mega-trend called the “Industrial Internet of Things.” Many executives and top level management in the industrial sector keep hearing the term but have no clue what it even means. For that education, Industrial Insight will have a secondary project and mission called IIoT Insight where the goal is to educate the market on what the IIoT is, who the major suppliers are, and how to monetize the technology.

 

So, what is the cause at Industrial Insight, Inc.?

 

I remember driving around West Tennessee, Northern Mississippi, and most of the Central and Eastern portion of Arkansas early in my career from mid to late 90’s through the mid-2000’s and kept seeing factories close. Jobs were just gone. People I worked side by side with no longer had a job. Or, I just kept thinking about all the people I never met who worked in the large, empty buildings with overgrown landscaping and it made me sad and angry. We were losing jobs to cheap labor in China, elsewhere in Asia, and to Mexico. Even though I was working in automation at the time, and trying to help reduce manufacturing costs, sometimes, it just wasn’t enough. The cause of Industrial Insight is rooted in my experiences since that time – jobs in small town America rely on good manufacturing companies. Industrial Insight looks to preserve these companies and hopefully, these jobs.

 

So, why should anyone do business with Industrial Insight, Inc.?

 

You should do business with us because we tirelessly work to understand your business and what drives it. We ask that you judge us on value delivered to you and to your company. We simply want to have an impact on the clients that we serve. We also have our “ear to the ground” to make sure we know what the best practices are, who the best talent is, and how all the ever-increasing technology out there will fit together to improve and benefit the customers we serve.

 

We truly want to be judged on the value we bring and the impact we have on our customers. As a matter of fact, we will not publish a rate sheet and will only use an hourly rate as a last resort to get work accomplished. There simply may be tasks that we can’t define well enough or the only way to have the agility needed to execute a project is by charging by the hour. However, we will strive to make this the exception and not the rule. You, as the customer of Industrial Insight generally don’t care how long it takes us to accomplish a task – you will simply ask “did the value of the project outweigh the cost that we paid for the work?” More often, you would prefer to get to a better result than we all imagine faster than we all thought possible. While that can’t always happen, that will always be our goal.

 

Industrial Insight was started to help people. It was started to help companies and their bottom line. Most importantly, it was started to help the people in the companies we serve with their day to day jobs and make them feel more productive and impactful. We want people to feel like they are making a difference at their company and in the world. Most people feel that they have too many demands on their time and that they aren’t being effective at making a difference at their job. The tools we will use to do so will vary by industry, customer, and job role, but the desired result will be the same for every company and every individual, but the mission will always remain the same – to deliver value and have an impact.

 

Jim Gavigan

President and Founder

Industrial Insight, Inc.