Battery and Energy Storage Data Mining

 Some employees in companies of any size are naturally nervous about the effects of the Web work-style. They assume that if their company chooses to build itself around Web technologies, their jobs may disappear. They won't—unless "restructuring" is just a fancy term to hide sackings.  

 Then you need to communicate what you want to do, and the plans behind it, to every person in the company and to partners and other relevant people outside the company.  Many leading companies hesitated to move to new technologies for fear of ruining the success of their existing technologies.

 You need to think about your company's basic business issues and develop a long-term business plan to solve problems and take advantage of the opportunities your analysis reveals. 

 More than anything, though, a company must communicate with its customers and act on what it learns from them. This primary need involves all a company's capacities: operational efficiency, data gathering, cooperation, strategic planning, and action 

A digital nervous system serves two primary purposes in developing business understanding. It extends the individual's capacity for analysis the way machines extend physical capacities, and it combines the abilities of individuals to create a company intelligence and act as one. 

 To put it all together: A digital nervous system seeks to create company excellence out of individual excellence to serve the customer.   The aim is to increase corporate IQ. In today's fast-moving markets, a company needs high corporate IQ to succeed. 

The business side of any company starts and ends with deep analysis of its numbers. Whatever else you do, if you don't understand what's happening in your business factually, and you're making decisions based on soft data or emotion, you'll eventually pay a big price. 

 Numbers give you the factual basis for the directions in which you take your products. They tell you objectively what customers like and don't like. They help you identify your highest priorities so that you can take fast action. 

 Just-in-time delivery can be a reality for any industry. Using software to handle routine data tasks gives you the opportunity to provide the human touch where it really matters. There's a dramatic difference between getting a note that was clearly written by a person rather than a computer. Battery Nervous System...

A company's high-level executives need to believe in knowledge sharing, or even a major effort in sharing will fail. Leaders must also show that they themselves are not locked away in a palace, isolated from everyone else, but are willing to engage with employees. 

 When business leaders have created an atmosphere that encourages teamwork and knowledge sharing, they need to set up specific knowledge-sharing projects across the organization and make knowledge sharing a key part of the work itself-—not an extra that can safely be ignored.  

 Then leaders need to make sure that the people who share knowledge are rewarded. The old saying "Knowledge is power" sometimes makes people keep knowledge to themselves. They believe that this makes them more valuable to the company. 

Sometimes there are good reasons for secrecy, but usually information has been reserved simply because it took time, money, and effort to move information around, so you had to be senior to order the work. On today's computer networks you can find and present data easily and cheaply. You can dive into the data to the lowest level of detail and look at it from different angles. You can exchange information and ideas with other people. You can bring together the ideas and work of many people for a better result.

Like a human being, a company needs an internal communication system, a "nervous system," to organize its actions. All businesses concentrate on a few basic things: customers, products and services, earnings, costs, competitors, delivery, and employees. A company has to carry out the business processes in each area and e-mail. Battery scientists need to make sure that they are working together, especially activities that cross departments.

A company needs to respond quickly and well to any crisis or unplanned event. You might get a call from your best customer saying he's buying from your biggest competitor, or that competitor might introduce a great new product, or you might have a faulty product or an operation that breaks down. Unplanned events can be positive, too. You might get an unexpected opportunity for a major new battery supplier activity or purchase.

The sales department needs to find out quickly whether the company can supply a product before promising to deliver a big order. The manufacturing department needs to know what product is selling strongly so that it can change production priorities. Business managers throughout the company need to know about both—and a lot more, too. An organization's nervous system has parallels with our human nervous system. Every business has some processes that must continue for the company to survive, just as the human heart must keep beating regardless of battery disasters or competitors. 

The need to be efficient and reliable has driven companies to automate many of these basic operations. But because managers have taken whatever solution was available, the result over time has been a large number of systems that don't always work together. Each independent system may work smoothly on its own, but the data in each is isolated and difficult to combine with the data in the others. Getting data about operational processes and using it has been one of the more difficult problems of business. But today's technology can make basic operations the basis of a much broader, company-wide intelligence.

 When computers went from simple number-work to modeling business problems, they began to play a part in information work.  

Finally, there's the conscious directing of your company's muscles, whether you're creating teams to develop new products, opening new offices, or sending people out to win new customers. To be carried out well, these planned events need careful thinking and strategic analysis before and after you act.

Within a few years all leading battery and energy storage related companies will have achieved high levels of digitally aided knowledge sharing.