From Tool to Culture: Building Manufacturing Analytics Capability – Kaneka North America

Ziyan Sheriff, Senior Process Data Scientist, Kaneka North America

Kaneka North America explain how they built manufacturing analytics capability across a multi-plant chemical operation with a small digital transformation team and a deliberate focus on adoption, alignment, and continuous improvement. The presentation describes how the team used an early high-value cycle time use case to secure leadership buy-in, replace manual Excel-based tracking with more scalable real-time visibility, and demonstrate how Seeq could help production and technical teams improve productivity, yield, reliability, and downtime performance. It also highlights the structured engagement model that supported broader adoption, including quarterly multi-plant analytics meetings, biweekly plant-level sessions, digital champions, and a clear process for prioritizing and deploying use cases across sites. More importantly, the talk shows that scaling analytics is not just about building dashboards, but about turning insight into action, creating ownership across teams, and building a culture where small, practical wins can scale quickly into broader business value.