Global Emission Analysis Dashboard

Technology Reply has implemented a Business Intelligence solution to facilitate the monitoring of pollutant emissions produced by vehicle engines

Scenario

The customer's need was to be able to consult, in an easy and intuitive way, the test data on engine emission. The tests are carried out directly in the production sites, present worldwide and have the aim of measuring various pollutants, such as: CO2, NOx, PM, NH3, CH4, CO under specific conditions of use. The results of these tests, called COP - Coefficient Of Performance, are subsequently compared with two macro types of limits:

  • Legislative limits: understood as emission limits, which must be respected by law; a powertrain that exceeds these limits cannot be marketed

  • Production limits: understood as emission limits defined by the manufacturer, usually more restrictive than the legislative ones, used as more challenging benchmarks

Challenge

The challenge undertaken by Technology Reply, for the realization of this project, mainly concerned two key points:

  • Coordination of developments between the different teams involved (from the infrastructure team to the data owners and end users)

  • The need to implement the frontend application, in advance of the actual availability of data from the various source systems. To meet this requirement, a technical solution was adopted that would allow the update of the dashboard independently of the availability of data on the source side, minimizing the rework during the actual availability of the data

Solution

Technology Reply took care of the technological implementation of the functional requirements on the QlikSense platform, of the definition and development of the entire data pipeline, from the ingestion phase to the visualization and analysis of the data. Different ETL procedures and a Data Quality process have been realized on the backend side. Thanks to that, heterogeneous data, coming from different data sources, have been integrated. These data have been cleaned up, normalized, filtered and reorganized in order to make them homogeneous and as suitable as possible for subsequent business intelligence analysis. On the frontend side, an interactive dashboard was implemented via the QlikSense platform to facilitate the reading of data and KPIs by end users.

The design of the frontend solution was shared with the end users through the creation of graphic mockups and step by step an intuitive layout was created, which would meet the user's request to facilitate its use and adoption by the department of Technical Certification. The front end structure contains an overview page that allows users to view, immediately and with a macro detail, the total quantity of tests carried out. That tests are divided into:

  • OK test, on both the two different types of limit

  • KO test, on both the two different types of limit

  • Void tests, which have not exceeded the performance limits and therefore not tested on pollutants

These KPIs are also shown both in pie charts, to identify, at a glance, the percentage of subdivision, and in bar charts, with the possibility of drilling down on additional details, to examine the distribution on dimensions of interest, such as the regions and product families.

From the overview section it is possible, through dedicated links, to land on three different detail pages with a table view that allows you to analyze:

  • Comparison between the test values and the legislative limits

  • Comparison between test values and production limits

  • The comparison between the values detected on the pollutants of all the tests with the relative values on the limits

A conventional formatting has been adopted on each section to allow the rapid identification of any alert conditions:

  • Green: if the test has been passed both the legal and production limits

  • Yellow: if the test has not been passed only the production limit

  • Red: if the test has not been passed the legal limit

It was also decided to combine the standard QlikSense features with the use of custom extensions for the creation of graphic objects that would make the navigation as simple and intuitive as possible. Finally, this solution provides the ability to build reports also through the use of high quality Nprinting - Pixel Perfect technology: allowing the sharing of reports between business users through various methods, such as e-mail, Shared Point

Advantages

  • The application is user friendly, end users were involved in the design phase in order to create a simple use interface.

  • The application allows ease of navigation, through the use of breadcrumbs to move between the various analysis pages and use of tooltips, to facilitate data reading.

  • The application is responsive: it allows you to easily navigate between the different pages having the amount of data just a click away.

  • The application is intuitive, the main KPIs are shown allowing an immediate reading of the data, to then develop, in the following pages, with ever greater detail and allow a more in-depth analysis.