AFT devel­ops IoT data pro­cess­ing and report­ing with Islet

Aikawa Fiber Tech­nolo­gies (AFT) and Islet Group have start­ed a col­lab­o­ra­tive project aim­ing to renew and devel­op AFT’s IoT data pro­cess­ing and report­ing. Islet team cre­at­ed a mod­ern data and ana­lyt­ics plat­form for AFT using Microsoft Fab­ric, which includes real-time report­ing of IoT data from devices through Microsoft Pow­er BI.

AFT is a glob­al sup­pli­er of spare parts, equip­ment and solu­tions, serv­ing cus­tomers in areas such as pulp, paper, food and min­er­als. IoT refers to sys­tems based on auto­mat­ic data trans­fer per­formed by tech­ni­cal devices and the remote mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol of these devices over the inter­net. With the right tools, this infor­ma­tion can be processed into an eas­i­ly usable form, and with the help of a data net­work, auto­mat­ic, real-time ana­lyt­ics can orga­nize this mas­sive amount of data into use­ful key fig­ures and snap­shot reports.

From man­u­al report­ing to scal­able architecture

Before the devel­op­ment project, AFT’s report­ing was based on a process requir­ing sev­er­al man­u­al stages and tools. The scal­a­bil­i­ty of the solu­tion also relied on man­u­al work. In the solu­tion imple­ment­ed by Islet, in addi­tion to cur­rent needs, pos­si­ble future needs and expand­abil­i­ty were tak­en into account. AFT’s data plat­form and report­ing will be expand­ed in stages by bring­ing in data from oth­er oper­a­tional systems.

The archi­tec­ture was imple­ment­ed using the Lake­house and Medal­lion mod­els, which have become indus­try stan­dards, sup­port­ed by Microsoft Fabric.

Data trans­for­ma­tion with Microsoft Fabric

The new Microsoft Fab­ric was cho­sen as the solu­tion plat­form, and nat­u­ral­ly Pow­er BI was cho­sen for report­ing. In addi­tion, main­te­nance of man­u­al­ly entered data was imple­ment­ed with Pow­er­Apps visu­al­iza­tions embed­ded in reports.

Microsoft­’s new SaaS-based ana­lyt­ics plat­form, Microsoft Fab­ric, pro­vides a new plat­form for build­ing data archi­tec­tures. Data trans­for­ma­tions between dif­fer­ent data lay­ers (bronze, sil­ver, gold) were imple­ment­ed with Fab­ric’s Data Engi­neer­ing work­loads using Spark Note­books. Data from the data lay­ers is stored in Lake­hous­es and links between them are imple­ment­ed with Shortcuts.

With Pow­er Apps appli­ca­tions embed­ded in Pow­er BI reports, man­u­al­ly entered data is stored in Fab­ric Ware­house tables and linked to the Lake­house also using a Short­cut. With the use of Short­cuts, there is no need to sep­a­rate­ly move data from one place to anoth­er, for exam­ple, from Ware­house to Lake­house. Pow­er BI reports use Fab­ric’s new Direct Lake con­nec­tion, which means that reports always have access to up-to-date data, includ­ing data entered by the user with Pow­er Apps. All data is stored in Fab­ric’s OneLake, and the data ELT process and its con­trol are car­ried out with Fab­ric’s Data Factory.

Islet is a full-ser­vice provider

Islet Group serves as AFT’s Cloud Solu­tion Part­ner (CSP), which means that Islet pro­vides all Fab­ric sub­scrip­tions relat­ed to the infor­ma­tion plat­form as well as Pow­er Apps and Pow­er BI licens­es. The col­lab­o­ra­tion cov­ers the infor­ma­tion plat­form, report­ing, ana­lyt­ics, and low-code appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment, as well as the main­te­nance of the over­all solution.

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Aikawa Fiber Tech­nolo­gies Oy spe­cial­izes in paper and pulp man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment. It pro­duces and sup­plies spare parts and equip­ment for stock prepa­ra­tion, screen­ing, refin­ing, and paper machine approach flow sys­tems. It is part of the glob­al AFT, which has man­u­fac­tur­ing units in Fin­land, Cana­da, South Korea, Brazil and Chi­na, as well as sales rep­re­sen­ta­tion world­wide. AFT is owned by the Japan­ese com­pa­ny Aikawa Iron Works, which spe­cial­izes in the man­u­fac­ture of equip­ment need­ed for paper and pulp production.

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