“Agility is, to use the Midwestern phrase, the The company decided to process and analyze hockey player that is charging across the center big data locally—at the edge, using Microsoft who suddenly 昀氀ips onto the back of his skates Azure SQL Edge. The goal was to push data and is going backwards in a different direction, from the plant’s on-premises SQL Server 昀氀awlessly, without losing a beat,” says Vale. to Azure SQL Edge, enable downstream applications to use the data stored in the SQL “That sense of agility, changing direction in your Edge device and then upload it to the cloud for rotation at speed without missing a beat, is further use. what we’re trying to get to. As with all changes it takes a while to do it—you have to get used With this new edge capability deployed, the to operating in a new rhythm. But I think we’re resulting faster and more streamlined processes getting there.” allowed 3M to predict a manufacturing line’s problems in advance, thus providing both By the end of the 2020, the company had operational ef昀椀ciency, cost savings bene昀椀ts and doubled its global production of N95 respirators solving a novel manufacturing problem with a to more than 1.1 billion per year. Supply-chain novel approach. ef昀椀ciencies and integrated business planning helped, but a critical enabler was 3M practices on the Cloud Continuum. For instance, at one 3M had doubled its of 3M’s manufacturing plants, it was dif昀椀cult to gather, transfer and use the data from the global production of production systems. N95 respirators to more than 1.1 billion per year. Ever–ready for every opportunity 36