Dashboard Virtual Assistant

Since human is the most valuable asset in the manufacturing industry, it is urgent to consider human operations an integral part of the manufacturing process and take into account the human-in-the-loop for the interaction design. Based on this design principle, we employ the virtual assistant as a m

Project Title

Dashboard Virtual Assistant

Project Area of Specialization

Artificial Intelligence

Project Summary

Since human is the most valuable asset in the manufacturing industry, it is urgent to consider human operations an integral part of the manufacturing process and take into account the human-in-the-loop for the interaction design. Based on this design principle, we employ the virtual assistant as a means to aid interaction between humans and dashboards and also accelerate the data collection. The proposed architecture is presented in Figure 1, consisting of two components, namely, the dashboard module and the virtual module. The dashboard module, designed by a three-layer structure, controls the visualization task where the data layer is responsible for the data exchange, the processing layer focuses on the data organization and the presentation layer governs the display of key information. The virtual assistant module primarily handles the requests from users, manipulates the display of the dashboard, and contacts the relative personnel for data input. The user sits in between the two modules, thereby managing the data flow between the two ends. The ultimate goal of the proposed work is to enhance the interaction between users and the dashboard and give users a more natural interface to obtain insights while driving the data collection in a novel and productive way with the adoption of the virtual assistant. In the following subsections, we will describe more details about the architecture, components, and workflow of each module. Dashboard. The proposed dashboard architecture (top dashed rectangle in Figure 1) using a bottom-up design approach consists of three layers: (1) data layer, (2) processing layer, and (3) presentation layer. The data layer aggregates data from different sources and is a crucial requirement for a dashboard to function.

RFID technology has been generally applied in manufacturing shop floors to facilitate data capture and identification automatically. Smart sensors are an integral part of many manufacturing applications to help collect data and monitor the manufacturing process about sound, temperature, vibration, pressure, and operational status, etc. Meanwhile, historical data are stored in the database and information systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and Supply Chain Management (SCM). We will only be working on historical data in this project. These legacy systems make data exchange easier within the organization and possess a variety of data that could be analyzed for failure prediction, quality monitoring, and shop-floor production management.

Project Objectives

The primary goal is to create a responsive virtual assistant to establish an effortless environment for users to gain information about various essentials of their business.

Our research questions for this study are as follows. RQ1: How to develop an effective and intuitive interaction method for users to communicate with the dashboards to reduce human efforts and burden? RQ2: How can the data collection process be improved in order to provide more real-time data for the dashboards?

Project Implementation Method

As we know a dashboard is very important to drive a business. But in order to not get into trouble dashboard must deliver right information. And it must be advanced and effective. Therefore, we will create a virtual assistant (VA) to play the role of a mediator between the dashboard and the user.  VA will provide a natural language interface for users to communicate with the dashboard. 

Step 1: Requirements Gathering 

Creating a dashboard is just like any other type of journey: We really need to know where we’re going so that we can decide how to get there. 

In dashboard-designing terms, that means gathering some input from the intended user(s). For this purpose, we will use SQL Server to create our database. 

Step 2: Creating SQL views 

SQL views will be created here in order to successfully create dashboard. 

Step 3: Ideation   

Now that we will know what my dashboard users want, it’s time for my team to do some brainstorming. The goal will be to determine how to accomplish the task at hand: creating a dashboard that lives up to user needs and expectations. 

Step 4: Dashboard Creation 

This is where the dashboard truly begins to come to life. Here we will create an effective and advanced dashboard. 

Step 5: Creating Virtual Assistant 

We will create a Virtual Assistant that can answer questions of User. For example, Virtual Assistant utters, “Hello, I am Lisa and how may I help you?” the user then asks, “the sales of this month.”  The VA then answers accordingly. To achieve the task of speech recognition we will use the method of speech to text recognition and for this conversion we will use Google Cloud Speech API.

Step 6: Training of virtual assistant

We will train our virtual assistant to become responsive on the given queries in the form of speech. 

Benefits of the Project

This project provides efficient and seamless use of dashboards for various business organizations. It eliminates hectic use of hands and works only on voice commands which makes it convenient for the employees to access data and information.

Owners of smaller business organizations can also benefit from it as high-end dashboards are very costly and consist of features that small organizations don’t make any use of. Here our dashboard comes in handy as it is comparatively easier to use and of minimum cost.

The employee making use of it won’t be needing any expertise or background knowledge of using it as the commands will be in natural language.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The final deliverable will be a single interface dashboard that will be connected to a database which will consist of data and information of the finance, sales, profits, loss etc. of the organization.

There will be a virtual assistant integrated to the dashboard and it will operate based on the voice command.

Final Deliverable of the Project

Software System

Core Industry

Finance

Other Industries

Core Technology

Artificial Intelligence(AI)

Other Technologies

Sustainable Development Goals

Decent Work and Economic Growth

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com