Research commissioned by Bull, EMC and Greenplum

Welcome to our Applied InsightSeries report on the manufacturing industry. This is the first in a series of reports examining how different sectors are applying big data analytics for competitive advantage and, crucially, what every business can learn from them.

Data is exploding in all areas of modern life. Tools - such as scalable compute power, parallel computing, in-memory analytics, non-relational databases and advanced visualisation techniques - have been developed to unlock the insight.

The manufacturing sector has been a forerunner of data driven decision-making for decades. This study features insight from end-users, analysts and academic groups, including the likes of McLaren F1, Volvo, Proctor & Gamble, Rolls-Royce, the Institute for Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge, Xerox and Ovum.

The potential gains available to manufacturers, including those contributing to this report, through the effective application of big data cannot be disputed. There are opportunities to enhance almost any area of the business, whether that's in the design process, on the production lines, in the supply chain or in the marketplace. The changes could result simply in the exchange of a single component, or they could lead to the entire realigning of a company's business model, all of which you'll see in this report.

The aim of this series is to help organisations of any size or sector to understand the great potential thatbig data has to offer. We hope you will find this report insightful, and translatable into you're own organisation.