Case study
Nike Extrusion (Mindlance)
OT-to-IT manufacturing data pipeline for Nike Air extrusion — Kepware, ThingWorx, Azure, and terabyte-scale analytics.
Manufacturing Data Engineer · Jan – May 2026
Overview
Contract engagement via Mindlance (Jan–May 2026) as Manufacturing Data Engineer on Nike extrusion operations. Initial Power BI scope expanded when BI could not scale to 20+ machines streaming thousands of sensor points per second. Jim remediated year-long data integrity failures and designed infrastructure for predictive process setup.
Architecture
OT → IT pipeline
- •Kepware — OT orchestration, tags, machine IP connectivity
- •ThingWorx — IT integration layer
- •AMU dashboard — manufacturing visibility
- •Azure — cloud persistence and analytics path
Data integrity remediation
- •Resolved stalled year-long project — inconsistent naming
- •Duplicate tags and schema mismatches across sensor families
- •CDC, roller, thickness, and machine sensor normalization
- •Cross-machine data alignment for reliable reporting
Analytics at scale
- •Terabyte-scale on-premises rolling buffer
- •Second-level granularity with ~two-week retention window
- •Python dashboard on same VM to avoid IT/OT latency
- •Power BI semantic model strategy for executive and supervisor views
Forward roadmap
- •Predictive process setup — historical extrusion parameters
- •Tolerance drift precursors for data-driven initial configs
- •Ideal Azure Event Hubs + Data Factory architecture documented
- •Stakeholder coordination across OT, IT, and plant floor
What shipped
- ✓Full pipeline architecture redesign beyond initial Power BI scope
- ✓Data integrity remediation across 20+ extrusion machines
- ✓Terabyte-scale rolling buffer design for high-frequency telemetry
- ✓Python manufacturing dashboard on OT-adjacent infrastructure
- ✓Power BI manufacturing dashboard strategy and dataflow documentation
- ✓Stakeholder coordination during workforce reduction (~30% staffing cut)
Related products
Contract engagement (Mindlance → Nike Manufacturing) — not a personal SaaS product. Ameren enterprise background is separate; cite Nike for IIoT, Kepware, and manufacturing analytics roles.
Source: Nike — Documentation/Power BI Manufacturing Dashboard/markdowns/ (START_HERE, ideal_dataflow_architecture).