By now, Industry 4.0 doesn’t need an introduction. For most manufacturers, it’s about using smart technology to centralize the unending stream of data they’re collecting and using powerful analytics to make sense of and utilize that data. Agility and flexibility have emerged as top priorities in this data-driven environment. These have proven extremely helpful for manufacturers who want to draw actionable insights and enhance their capabilities by means of integrations.
Through powerful integrations, manufacturers can be more efficient but also face challenges such as making use of scattered, inconsistent data and overcoming the limitations of a single system.
In today’s article, you’ll read why you should consider integrating AlisQI with PowerBI. This robust combo allows manufacturers with specific demands to enjoy interactive visualizations and add business intelligence capabilities on top of their quality data.
Let’s elaborate.
PowerBI - business intelligence for citizen developers
By launching PowerBI Microsoft took a big step in democratizing business intelligence for citizen developers. You no longer need to be a computer science graduate to create powerful dashboards and reports. All quality master and transactional data are available for advanced reporting. This enables the quality team to build their own quality intelligence dashboards, without IT dependencies. Especially in these hectic times when both quality and IT personnel are scarce, this approach helps you move forward. The days of heavy IT dependencies are long gone.
Why should you consider integrating AlisQI with PowerBI
Although the built-in analytics tools of our eQMS are diverse and powerful, you might have some specific reporting demands that AlisQI cannot fulfill. Maybe you’d like to combine data from different sources or different facilities. Or perhaps you’d like to enrich your quality data with the production data you’re collecting. Say you want to create a custom aggregation of data per week or per month.
If you can recognize any of these use cases, integration with Microsoft PowerBI can be a great solution. PowerBI organizes and visualizes data, transforming it into beautiful, interactive reports. Any PowerBI reports and dashboards can be embedded again into AlisQI, to have all relevant data in one place.
Manufacturers who have integrated the AlisQI platform with PowerBI:
- Enjoy unlimited flexibility – Once you grasp how you can use AlisQI data within PowerBI, you can create any report or dashboard you can think of.
- Simplify the decision-making process – Generate clear overviews, user-friendly reports, and interactive visualizations which aid understanding. Create a holistic view of your factory performance.
- Combine data sources in one overview – All PowerBI reports and dashboards can also be embedded again into AlisQI, the integration is seamless and data is always accessible.
- Enrich ERP/MES data with quality attributes – This not only aids understanding but helps with in-depth data analysis for business process improvements.
Why Allnex chose to integrate AlisQI with PowerBI
One of the first AlisQI customers to enjoy the benefits of the AlisQI/PowerBI integration was Allnex. A leading manufacturer in the chemicals industry, Allnex produces resins, a base component for paints and coatings.
With tens of batches manufactured per week, their products are mixed in reactors. Yet, mixing used to be a challenge – if the reactor was not cleaned after each usage, the residue left in it could react or contaminate a subsequent batch, compromising its quality. To help with this pain and maintain quality at the highest level, AlisQI helped Allnex create and manage a product inventory. This optimization of their planning contains details about the sequence in production and how products can be manufactured without contamination or cleaning reactors after every batch.
Before taking this step, Allnex had a homebrew Access solution to manage the mixability aspect. But with quality deteriorating, they asked AlisQI to intervene. And, while AlisQI has extensive dashboarding capabilities, this particular case asked for more advanced tooling. That’s why we reached out to our partner and PowerBI expert, Easydash to help us build a customized dashboard.
A flexible mixability dashboard for Allnex
Now all master data on the mixability of products are maintained in AlisQI, adding up to well over 30.000 product combinations. Easydash loads this data through the API and presents it in a PowerBI dashboard that the planners utilize to optimize their planning.
“AlisQI’s API was very easy to use and allowed us to easily load data into PowerBI and create a dashboard that is now used by Allnex daily,” said Rob van Zutphen, Co-Founder and BI consultant at Easydash.
The dashboard tells planners which products can be produced before or after a given product, helping them to determine the optimal sequence, and reducing as many reactor cleaning steps as possible.
Conclusion
An integration between AlisQI and PowerBI can fulfill even the most demanding reporting and dashboarding needs. It will allow you to leverage quality data, and visualize and create interactive dashboards while ensuring the highest level of quality. The experience of Allnex teaches us that a holistic view of the factory’s performance is possible even when dealing with large amounts of data.
Do you want to learn more about integrating AlisQI with PowerBI and the advantages that this can bring to your organization? Please feel free to reach out and discuss your case.
