Briefs

Associated Press, August 7, 2005

The automated analysis of "unstructured" data is becoming remarkably agile at giving companies detailed answers to the age-old business question of "How are we doing?"

The tiniest of flaws in a massive forklift truck is crucial information for Ryan McLawhorn, quality improvement manager at NACCO Industries. If his cargo-vehicle division can detect common problems and fix them in the manufacturing process, it can save millions on warranty claims.

That's not easy with 80,000 claims rolling in every year. So McLawhorn turned to data-mining software that examines service reports for precise trends. For years he had software that could alert him, say, to a batch of wiring problems. But now he can be told if a certain wire often comes loose, and under what circumstances.

...

"Our technology, on a simple laptop, can read through Moby-Dick and analyze it in nine seconds," said Craig Norris, head of Attensity, the company that supplied NACCO's software.

The cooperation is required because so many different kinds of unstructured-data engines have sprung up in recent years, driven in large part by the U.S. government's demand for intelligence analysis. The CIA has funded several unstructured-data management companies, including Attensity.

Another CIA-backed company, Intelliseek, recently partnered with the Factiva information service to offer "reputation insight."

Here is the rest of the story.