Data Quality Report

Advanced Manufacturing

"How does the DQ Reporting Service work?" "What is Data Quality?" and "What value does it add?" are some of the questions that customers ask. This article was written to answer these questions.

Generally, in a world with more and more data and tools, one can lose sight of how things work. Lantek, a company dedicated to Industry 4.0, provides many tools in order to maximize sheet metal production. Lantek Control Panel and Lantek Analytics are two examples of solutions within Lantek’s portfolio of services. Essentially, all of these new tools attempt to provide a broader view and greater control over what happens in the factory, within the Lantek 360 suite.

The interaction between different tools and functional blocks is quite complex: many communicate with others while some feed off of previous solutions (the ERP system is an input for Analytics, for example). That said, what would happen if we wanted to implement Analytics and also, for some reason, the ERP system is not working as it should? That side is hobbling along and therefore, Analytics cannot be fully leveraged.

This service was created to minimize the risk involved in so many interactions between tools and data. This is done with different points of view, which are known under Data Quality theory as dimensions. There are many dimensions or points of view that can be analysed, however, the five most interesting for us are: Complexity (how comprehensive is the information), Consistency (how in line is the data), Uniqueness (how well can we uniquely identify the data), Validity (are the data accurate), and Representativeness (how varied the information input is).

In short, each dimension aims to assess the data from one point of view. As a result, these tests allow us to assess a specific client’s data and, based on the suspended aspect, we can define different techniques or methods to try to improve it in the event of intervention. These are like a set of tests where if you fail one, you should try to focus on the ones you didn’t study enough of to pass.

In conclusion, DQ Report Service allows users to find out the quality of the data in the solutions they are interested in. On the one hand, this allows us to be able to implement solutions with a guarantee and, on the other, it allows us to find and improve processes in order to provide customers with operational excellence.