On Thursday 22 April 2021 data specialists will gather for a 1-day virtual event – Industrial Data Symposium – Insight at Scale – to share the latest and most relevant ideas on how data and data management can transform manufacturing businesses.
Ahead of the event, we asked Shiela Elz, Data Manager at Bayer AG and a discussion leader at the Industrial Data Symposium, for insights into the importance and function of data to the company. Sheila will be co-hosting the Data Collection and Data Integration Discussion Room at the Symposium with Andrew Sandler, Director of Data Science and Analytics, Hitachi Solutions.
Bayer AG is a multinational company with core competencies in the Life Science fields of health care and agriculture.
What exactly is data to you?
For me, it is digitized information. So, the information is the important part. And then the digital form, of course, is also important because that is both human and machine readable. It is important because not only do we need it for reporting to health authorities, but we must also be compliant, having to apply for permission to perform clinical studies. We are required to apply for a marketing authorization for the products after about 10 years of development and here, the data is central when considering what is submitted in this application.
How do you decide what data is important to collect?
Our focus is to define our Master Data Management, or our scope of master data and then we look at which, out of those 1000s of those data objects, are consistent and uniform throughout the development of the product. They must describe the core entities of our business as they are used across all those different business processes. They must also be stable, that’s the traditional definition i.e., they’re not transactional data, instead they are the ones that are stable along the whole entire r&d value chain.
What value does a company gain from data integration?
The number one thing is the data silos, but not only data silos, there are also functional silos, and they are silos in the company i.e., that communication of functions between the divisions. The aim is to overcome those data silos, as well as the process silos. We want to create a common understanding of the data by providing those descriptive relations and the mappings between the similar and synonym objects. And overall, we want to provide an overarching data model. We do this so that we can make better decisions, and we want to make those decisions and data driven insights and we also want to create value.
What are you looking forward to learning at Industrial Data Symposium 2021?
What others are struggling with and how they are solving that i.e., whether there are similarities to what our company is going through in all this digitalization. And what solutions so far are being implemented.
Book Your place at Industrial Data Symposium – Insight at Scale
Make sure you book your place at Industrial Data Symposium – Insight at Scale on 22 April 2021. For more information and to book your place click here
