Data is available from multiple sources and these include:
- InSQL
- Alarm system
- Downtime system
- Tracking system
- Batching system
- Other corporate systems e.g. Oracle
- Web Services
External sources such as Web Services which may be internal and external to the
corporate system. This information is available at the operational level and is normally
on the production network. Typically this data needs to be summarized for management
of the production operation but more importantly for the management of the business.
Minot Enterprises specializes in this area and builds both summary systems
as well as data warehouses for analysis purposes. The summary systems typically run
as a scheduled task that will run after the summary period has occurred. The summaries are normally
performed per hour, or per shift and rolled up for larger period such as a day, week, month
or year. There are quite a few subtleties to handle this data which need to be taken care
of such as handling daylight saving time changes, recalculation of data on changes and
record keeping of changes.
When developing such systems there is usually a requirement for the development of custom
equations as per the customer individual business rules and these need to be incorporated
into the system. Every business also has a specific set of key performance indicators that
give critical information on the state of the business. These are all calculated within the
summary layer. In cases where a customer requires the ability to analyze business data
Minot Enterprises will develop a data warehouse, and by using available client tools customers
can slice and dice the data as required to analyze their business.