Leveraging Big Data

Founded in 1945, metal fabricator Dalsin Industries makes custom parts for several sectors, notably transportation, medical, audio-visual, solar, and energy generation. “We offer just about anything a customer can dream up in terms of small parts and large assemblies,” says Keith Diekmann, Dalsin’s vice president of technical operations.Dalsin also knows how to innovate. In September, The Silicon Review, a magazine that covers business and high tech, listed the Bloomington–based manufacturer among its Top 50 Companies to Watch in 2019. The magazine cited Dalsin’s use of automation and robotics, as well as its deployment of a global supply chain program. One of Dalsin’s products is the Memphis Wood Fire Grill, which incorporates a mobile app that allows residential chefs to remotely monitor and adjust cooking temperatures.Dalsin has “always been on that leading edge of using technology to improve processes and become more efficient and effective in making the parts,” Diekmann says. Its production operation incorporates robotic welding and 3D printing, which allows the company to reduce the lead time for its customers.Now Dalsin, which employs about 200 people, is exploring what constitutes the next generation of manufacturing. Sensors and other electronic measurement devices are generating an abundance of information about the company’s production equipment. “A lot of our machines are connected, collecting that data,” Diekmann says. We’re continually analyzing it, trying to figure out what this tells us, and how we can use this information in the future.Dalsin is just beginning to learn what it could do with this data. Businesses in many other industries are in the same boat. This is the realm of what’s been called “big data”: It includes not only data management and analytics but also more advanced technologies, notably the internet of things (IoT), machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI). Those latter terms conjure up images of self-driving cars and sentient robots including, in many people’s minds, the scary dystopia of The Terminator movies.