How Natural Language Generation Impacts Business Intelligence for Manufacturers

NarrativeWave’s Senior Data Scientist, Christopher Stewart, discusses how Natural Language Generation (NLG) drives business intelligence for manufacturers and their clients.

Language is the ultimate user interface. Think about it: we are hardwired to communicate ideas and emotions via language. Even with the ubiquity of technology, interacting with machines using human language was a dream until around twenty years ago. Today, we are talking to smart devices like Siri, Alexa and Cortana, among others, in our daily lives. If language has revolutionized the way consumers interact with technology, imagine the potential impact it could have on how we use data relative to every commercial and industrial application that enables our daily lives.

At NarrativeWave, we translate complex datasets into readily understandable narratives using Natural Language Generation (NLG). NLG first converts raw data into a set of findings, then uses relevant language to communicate those findings. The human brain is configured to understand stories, not endless rows of numbers and strings, which is why NLG is a game changer for business intelligence and impacts operational business decisions in near real time.

NLG will significantly impact the Industrial Internet of Things.

How is NLG used within NarrativeWave?

Huge industrial machines are complex, multi-million dollar assets that are monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When a sensor flags a potential issue, an alarm is sent to a service center and reviewed by an engineer. The traditional process of diagnosing an alarm requires an engineer to manually sift through the data and author a report on their findings, which can take up to 16 hours.

With NarrativeWave, the process takes less than 5 minutes. The NarrativeWave platform ingests large volumes of data, detects what is relevant, and automatically generates an immediate actionable business insight. Our version of a “business insight” is an auto-generated and accurate business decision. Engineers leverage this business decision to report the business outcome to their clients.

Our platform uses NLG to communicate findings to engineers and business users. Each auto-generated report includes a content-rich story in the form of a few bullet points and uses natural-sounding, client specific verbiage. Therefore, the auto-generated text reads and is understood as if it were written by an engineer, not a robot, and then shared in the same format that is relevant with clients.

What is the importance of NLG?

Collecting data is no longer that difficult. Understanding & using data to impact operational decisions, is still a real pain point. Our platform allows users to quickly understand data by converting it into stories. When applied to industrial assets, NarrativeWave’s NLG component allows users to quickly understand what is happening with an asset and why, based on the data provided.

How do you ensure the language is accurate?

Writing effectively is difficult, even for humans! NarrativeWave enables users to customize the language generated to ensure that it is relevant to the audience.

Benefits of NLG for engineers, business users, and manufacturers?

The main advantage of our platform is that it allows users to turn spreadsheets of sensor data into easily understandable reports facilitates diagnosing mechanical issues and false alarms. Engineers can process our reports in minutes, quickly determining why an alarm triggered and what to do about it.

Engineers that use NarrativeWave can do more in less time, reduce repetitive work, and for the first time, optimize and improve their value.

This platform makes life easier for business users. At the click of a mouse, they can see the status of their assets and plan for future actions. Instead of waiting for an engineer to write a report, NarrativeWave allows them to find out what is happening — immediately.

For Manufacturers, Airlines, Utilities, Transportation, Shipping Rail, Oil & Gas Operators organizations, the platform increases workflow efficiency by automating repetitive and time consuming tasks. Engineers can focus on higher value work. The NarrativeWave solution, based upon constant input, becomes more accurate over time and reduces human error. The result is a more consistent, predictable solution for engineers and their clients.

The future of NLG for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)?

NLG is becoming an important means of delivering analytics to mainstream engineers, business users, manufacturers, and clients like Airlines and Utilities. The Industrial Internet is flush with data and not knowing how to use it effectively costs organizations hundreds of millions of dollars. Using NLG to understand this data is highly efficient and impacts time, costs, unplanned downtime, and catastrophic failures. NarrativeWave and other IIoT solutions will improve business operations.

Most importantly, our platform will improve the infrastructure relied upon daily by consumers that demand the reliable use of cars, planes, rail, electricity, shipping, energy, and water in their lives.

Website: www.narrativewave.com 

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Inquiries: marketing@narrativewave.com

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