Creative problem solving using Visual Analytics in Product Development

Visual analytics is a new interdisciplinary science aimed at drawing inference and conclusions from data. In contrast to standard machine learning or statistics, visual analytics emphasizes information visualization, interactivity, and analytic reasoning. [http://smlv.cc.gatech.edu/2010/03/17/what-is-visual-analytics/]. It is an outgrowth of the field’s information visualization and scientific visualization, which focuses on analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_analytics]

If you really want to go into the depths of VA then you can attend a few web lectures from Georgia Tech here

A few years back digg.com had these great visualizations – stack, swarm and big spy; though they seem to be out of service now. (see Where Have Digg Labs Gone?)

 

A related disciple is text analytics. The term text analytics describes a set of linguistic, statistical, and machine learning techniques that model and structure the information content of textual sources for business intelligence, exploratory data analysis, research, or investigation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_analytics]

A tag or word cloud is related to text analytics. We all have seen these tag clouds over the past couple of years. Tag clouds are an informative image that communicates much in a single glance. Word clouds are easy to read, analyze and compare, serve a variety of useful purposes including visual analysis of qualitative data. For example using FDA Medical Devices CFR - Code of Federal Regulations Title 21 and TagCrowd I created this visualization (clearly showing that the major emphasis of this regulation is on manufacturers.)

Coming to the PLM domain, if we can process product data in such a method then we can arrive at a number of interesting observation very easily. For example to show which product has how many change requests? Or which product uses the least parts from a standard library. It can be easily done and if there is an enormous amount of data in an organization such visualizations can offer great information to executives very intuitively.

Another great tool I recently saw was from TouchGraph. See this image which displays a person’s network connections from Facebook.

This sort of visualization when brought into an enterprise can easily put in the picture about a multitude of different things, like for example; a change in a standard part is going to affect how many products down the line, etc. I believe Visual analytics will lead to creative problem solving and faster solutions to problems will drive higher product profitability.

PLM and Innovation

Does the word “innovation” seem like a clichéd utterance to you? Google it and you get a mind-boggling 142,000,000+ hits. Every company or organization today seems to be willing to attach the word to it. I have been following the PLM industry for some time and roughly all companies (regardless of being a product, services or a pure play consulting firm) seems to promoting that either its products or services can help customers in innovating. So then what is innovation?

Wikipedia delineates it as: “Innovation is a change in the thought process for doing something, or the useful application of new inventions or discoveries. It may refer to an incremental emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations.”

Further, “Invention is the embodiment of something new. While both invention and innovation have "uniqueness" implications, innovation also carries an undertone of profitability and market performance expectation.”

So then “Innovation . . . is generally understood as the successful introduction of a new thing or method . . . Innovation is the embodiment, combination, or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services.”. There are a number of variations to the central theme - Doblin Ten Types Of Innovation™ seems to capture them all.

Here is what some of the key players say.

Leading PLM Software for New Product Development en Yahoo! Video

I identify more closely with what Prof VG says about innovation: “Innovation is Not Creativity” and "The guiding managerial model for innovation is just too simple. It reduces to: innovation = ideas. As a result, most corporations have more ideas than they can possibly move forward. Far too many promising ideas on paper never become anything more than . . . promising ideas on paper. Here is an improved equation for innovation: innovation = ideas + execution"

So then if your company can generate “sell-able” ideas consistently you just need a tool to help you in their execution? Love to hear your thoughts on this.