Why BI fails on the shop floor - and how to fix it

Business intelligence in manufacturing has come a long way. Sophisticated dashboards, cloud-connected systems and digital twins all promise real-time insight into operations. But in many plants, those tools still fail to drive meaningful change. Why? Because they never make it to the shop floor.

Too often, BI lives in boardrooms and back offices. Reports get reviewed weekly or monthly, removed from the rhythm of daily production. Metrics are aggregated to the point where frontline teams can’t see how their actions affect the bigger picture. And when problems do arise, the data arrives too late to do anything about it.

When dashboards miss the moment

That’s when you know BI has failed. If the operator or team leader isn’t looking at the dashboard before they make a decision then the insight is not embedded. It becomes an afterthought, not a tool.

The root issue is alignment. Or, as Olivier Aubert, Data Product Manager at All Your BI puts it: “The problem isn’t the tech - it’s that the data doesn’t speak the language of the shop floor.”

The systems may be powerful, but they are not designed around how work actually happens. They present too much, too abstractly, or too late. The result is low adoption, low trust and low impact.

The need for a mindset shift

Fixing this requires a shift in thinking. BI must be operational by design.

As Olivier says: “Dashboards have to reflect how teams are structured and how processes flow, not just how data is stored.”

This means showing the right metrics at the right level, with enough context to drive action.

All Your BI approaches this challenge from the ground up. Their operational BI systems are built to slot into the pulse of plant activity. Whether it’s a team leader at the start of a shift, a maintenance manager reviewing asset uptime, or a planner adjusting a schedule, the dashboards support real decisions made in real time.

 That starts with a clean data model, consistent KPIs and agreed definitions. But it goes further. It means co-designing views with users, not just IT. It means building performance conversations around the data, not just publishing it. And it means treating BI not as a project, but as part of the operating system of the factory.

When it works, the results show up fast. Faster interventions. Fewer blind spots. Teams that understand what’s happening, why it matters and what to do next.

The impact of embedded BI

BI on its own doesn’t improve performance. Embedded BI does. And the place it needs to be embedded first is not in the board pack, but in the everyday decisions happening on the shop floor.