The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) has a nice articled title: "Managing Factory Data" that discusses:
Effective data management tools and techniques leverage critical metrics from the shop floor.
The article is written by Patrick Waurzyniak who is the Senior Editor for Manufacturing Engineering and Patrick does a great job with the article. You should read the entire article, but here are the paragraphs where Patrick quotes me directly:
"Real-time data collection and monitoring of machine tools for measuring OEE metrics is essential for successful lean manufacturing efforts and critical shop-floor processes, many observers note. Yet in spite of this need for critical data analysis, a large percentage of shops simply don’t have machine monitoring, notes David Edstrom, president and chairman of MTConnect Institute (McLean, VA). Edstrom, who recently gave a talk on shop-floor networking and communication and the MTConnect protocol at the DMG / Mori Seiki (Hoffman Estates, IL) Innovation Days, says that only about 4–5% of machine tools are monitored today. "Running a shop without remote 
monitoring is like racing a Corvette in the 24 hours of LeMans without a dashboard," Edstrom says. "Do you know more about your car than you do about your shop?"
monitoring is like racing a Corvette in the 24 hours of LeMans without a dashboard," Edstrom says. "Do you know more about your car than you do about your shop?"
Among nearly two dozen key metrics to be derived from shop-floor management systems, Edstrom listed OEE at the top, with others including asset utilization, diagnostics, statistical process control (SPC), jobs/lot tracking, cell management, inspection probing, machine health prognostics, vibration monitoring, preventative maintenance, energy costs, anywhere-anytime access to plant-floor information, and data mining.
Today’s manufacturing customers are looking for a truly plug-and-play solution, Edstrom notes, which is what has been proposed with version 1.2 of MTConnect, a free, open-source protocol based on Internet standards including Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Extensible Markup Language (XML). "Think of MTConnect as the Bluetooth for manufacturing," Edstrom explains. "Essentially, it makes machine tools look like a Web site."
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