Wednesday 2023-05-03

A company that is able to evaluate large amounts of data quickly and efficiently can react more specifically to market changes, optimise its business processes, reduce costs and achieve competitive advantages. This is why Palantir Foundry now complements HELLA's existing analytics portfolio, which includes SAP Analytics Cloud and Data Warehouse, for example. The strengths of the new platform lie in particular in the analysis and processing of large amounts of data as well as the logical modelling of data from diverse source systems.

"Data is invaluable to our business, but we are not using it to its full potential. With Palantir Foundry, we therefore want to make data more available, enable explorative analyses and simplify the handling of data for employees. We are benefiting from the experience of Faurecia, which has been using Palantir Foundry for some time now," explains Daniel Eckelt, who is in charge of Data Program at HELLA.

A key factor is data quality

"The result of the data analysis can be of help to us only if the input is right. That's why we already pay attention to the quality of the data before loading it into the platform," explains Pascal Borst, who heads the Data Office at HELLA. "In order to also ensure this for the future, we are currently working on a corresponding framework, the 'data owner' approach, which should clearly regulate responsibilities."

Where are we at with the introduction of the platform and what opportunities are there for the employees?

The implementation of Palantir Foundry is already well advanced. The first projects are nearing completion. The introduction takes place in close cooperation with the IT department and is accompanied by the IT committee of the group works council. Special attention is paid to information security and the protection of personal data. The next milestone is the adoption of the company agreement for the permanent use of Palantir Foundry at HELLA.

In addition, empowering employees to use the platform is an essential element for successful implementation. Participants from five different countries and various HELLA business divisions have therefore already worked on their own application examples with Palantir in training sessions. A Palantir trainer will continue to be available to participants after the end of the training for questions and support. The next training is already being planned and will probably take place in Romania. Furthermore, additional e-learnings are currently being developed and are expected to be made available in the second quarter of 2023. "We want to raise awareness of the new technologies across the board, empower employees and establish user networks, as well as make experts such as data engineers and scientists available centrally for application development," emphasises Daniel Eckelt.

In addition, Palantir Foundry is to be integrated into the existing analytics portfolio in the best possible way and the selection process of a platform is to be made as simple as possible. "A team of experts therefore decides, depending on the use case, which tool - i.e. Palantir, SAP Analytics Cloud or Data Warehouse - is to be used for the implementation. With this approach, we ensure that users always receive the best solution and do not have to worry about administrative issues," emphasises Hansjörg Prohl, who heads the IT Business Applications department at HELLA.

For those interested: Working on the platform

Palantir Foundry offers a wide range of applications for data analysis. These range from intuitive user interfaces for laypeople with an affinity for analysis to applications for programming intelligent algorithms, such as machine learning. Interested parties are welcome to contact the responsible colleagues to jointly develop and advance application ideas (see below for contact information).

The development of applications can take place in close cooperation with the Data Programme, the Data Office and IT, as well as autonomously in the respective areas. Autonomously managed projects draw on databases that are already available to users on the platform. Participation in a training or e-learning is highly recommended before starting the project.

Use case example: Quality assurance

How the use of Palantir can support HELLA in concrete terms can be seen in the "Novelty Detection" project led by GE Operations Digitalization, which is currentlybeing introduced inthe electronics plants. The necessary algorithm and data engineering for Palantir is provided by the Artificial Intelligence Solutions department of the Global Software House. In the future, quality staff can be alerted by the Palantir platform via email about the occurrence of new measurement and process errors that have not occurred in a certain historical period. An interactive web interface provides additional support for error interpretation. In this way, it is possible to react at an early stage if new problems arise in the factory.

"With the help of Palantir, fault investigation now works 'proactively' through the automatic analysis of large amounts of data from machines and test equipment. The data can be reused in further projects because it is already on the platform. This supports scalability," says the responsible project manager Marcus Hain.