I get asked this a lot: should I be gathering more data from my shopfloor? Well, I guess I will give a short answer with what I regard as the best answer ever given: It depends.

When we think about what we’re looking for in terms of information from the shopfloor, the key word in that phrase is information. And I can say that from all the time I’ve spent working with various companies is that there is often a very wide gulf between data and information.

I usually think of it in terms of this: all information has data, but not all data is information. Information typically has context. Is it telling me to do something, has a threshold been exceeded, am I doing better (or worse) than plan? The best analogy I’ve given on this difference is one that almost everyone has experienced – speed limits. The reading on your speedometer is data – that data in conjunction with the speed limit at your exact location is information.

But how do I know if I’m getting good information from my shopfloor? I recommend starting with a fairly simple concept. Ask yourself - what does “success” look like? Once we figure out what success looks like, we can start to come up with Key Performance Indicators to start measuring that. And that likely may involve adding more sources of “data” – sensors and the like. But since we are gathering data in support of providing information, that data now has context. I would avoid gathering data for the sake of gathering data – it is inefficient and often leads to confusion. Information from the right place gathered at the right time can be truly powerful and transformative.

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