The different classes of analytics

Analytics can be applied for different purposes and using different techniques. They are generally separated into four different families: descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive. These are ordered from the simplest to the most advanced.

Descriptive analytics

Descriptive analytics is the most basic class of analytics. They analyze past data to try and provide a broad view of the fleet. In other words, descriptive analytics tries to answer the question, “What happened?”. These analytics use data mining, aggregation, or visual intelligence techniques to understand the status of the assets. In the IIoT, the most common technique used for descriptive analytics is KPI monitoring.

KPI and health monitoring

KPI monitoring is the simplest way to monitor the health of a fleet by aggregating or calculating new indicators from raw data. Moreover, we can implement a condition monitoring mechanism using a specific simple...