ELK – What do we gain by visualizing our data in real time?
Real-time data visualization (1/4)
Today’s society demands speed and punctuality. To meet these two requirements, it is essential to have real-time information.
Data is being generated continuously by a multitude of devices. In addition, we are beginning to understand the importance of data analysis. That is why more and more companies are looking for a way to analyze this data as quickly as possible.
Do you really save costs with real-time data monitoring?
YES! In the form of: reduced expenses, resource optimization, demand-based forecasts…
Let us look at different use cases:
- Use Case #1: Supplier
- In the field of logistics, if we know how and how much our customer is consuming, we can optimize stock to deliver in full and on time. In this way, we save on tied-up capital, reduce warehousing costs, and ensure a lower safety stock level.
- Use Case #2: Customer
- If the company is engaged in production and depends on a raw material supplied by an external provider, that provider can know at all times how much raw material remains in the warehouse and, therefore, can supply the company accordingly, avoiding stockouts, with the advantages that entails. If the company runs out of raw material, it would have to stop production, increasing costs and raising the risk of having to delay a shipment.
- Use Case #3: Production line
- If our company is engaged in line production, we can graphically represent all the parameters collected on it, so that we will be able to detect errors in the production chain in real time simply through visualization, and thus remove the affected part as quickly as possible, without having to wait for it to travel through the entire chain to be removed manually.
How can a company achieve real-time data visualizations? And how can we obtain this information automatically?
To answer these two questions, we will use the ELK environment: Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. With these three software tools, we obtain a complete suite that allows us to collect data and send it (Logstash) to a database (Elasticsearch), where the necessary searches will be performed so that, from a graphical visualization tool (Kibana), we can see the results in real time.
Experiment: Real-time monitoring of data from two cars.
We currently have the necessary technology to store and display data in real time, so over the coming weeks we will publish a series of posts in which we will cover how to create graphical representations of two moving cars. This will be the final result!
Each week we will publish two new posts—do not miss them!