Analog Devices invests
in BI tools


6 Sep 2005

Limerick-based semiconductor manufacturer Analog Devices has signed a deal with SAS Institute, the privately held US software giant.

Analog Devices will use SAS Business Intelligence Server to improve manufacturing efficiency and productivity. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

Analog Devices was previously unable to extract data and conduct analysis quickly enough and found it had limited capacity to reuse reports or automate report production.

“A key reason for choosing SAS was that the system makes critical information much more freely available, allowing us to detect problems and spot improvement opportunities more rapidly,” said Shane Geary, staff engineer at Analog Devices’ wafer fabrication plant in Limerick. “Engineers can automate many of the tasks associated with analysing data, thus significantly improving efficiency and many of the data requirements of process engineering, equipment engineering and manufacturing can be satisfied using a single solution set.”

Analog Devices claims to have significantly reduced its report development time – depending on the report, the development work can be completed in one half to one fifth the length of time. Data extraction and analysis can now be fully automated and users can access the data themselves to create their own web-based reports.

Brian Croke, sector manager for manufacturing at SAS, noted that SAS Business Intelligence Server was able to address the problem faced by many manufacturing organisations – how to “accurately gather and distribute information to the people who can act on it.”

By Brian Skelly