Difficult times like this require creative solutions to get the maximum performance out of production facilities. This requires optimum use of capabilities of the available resources material, equipment and people.
To improve the production results another resource may be of great help: historical production data. With the historical data and statistical modeling packages the production results can be dramatically improved.
In the past the statistical packages were very complex and expensive, but current developments in this area are showing simple configurable packages for reasonable prices. Process engineers with a little help from a specialist are able to built and maintain there own statistical models and can realize the possible improvements for their process within a number of weeks.