Looking for advice on data analysis

Hi all, I have used matlab for image processing projects before. So I know my way around matlab environment. This is my first attempt of using matlab for data analysis and I am not a data analysis anyway. I like to learn data analysis to identify methods to improve production and reduce waste in a production process. I have a data set (on excel) of a production process that I would like to analysis. The production process had 17 steps and 6 month of data colllected. The data consist of the specific step of the production process where damages have happened and the amount of damages. general advice on methods to optimizing this data to improve productivity will be highly appreciated. What can I do with this data? Can I use this data to identify patterns, predict damages in the future, if so how ?

Answer 1

[OCDER]

Depends on the quality of the data. This doesn't seem like Matlab issue though, other than the fact you might be needing Statistical Toolbox. We also have no idea what parameters you can vary for "optimizing this data", whatever that means. Did you mean maximize production, maximize profit, minimize failure, etc?

You cannot predict exact time of damages in the future, but you could calculate a failure probability for a certain process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_rate . Here's another about reliability analysis: http://www.reliabilityeducation.com/ReliabilityPredictionBasics.pdf . Do you have the data to these analysis?

Also, you may want to look up the difference between "analysis", "analyst", and "analyze".