Power BI is an analytics visualisation tool, which uses data directly from Makersite reports to allow graphical analysis of the results of your product or supply chain.

One of the main uses of the platform is to analyse Global Warming Potential (GWP) reports to then make informed decisions on where to focus effort & resource to best set & achieve climate targets.

You can connect Makersite data with Power BI by copying the Power BI link from any report, and using that link in Power BI - see Microsoft documentation for details (TL;DR Get Data > Web > paste the link from Makersite report).

The starting point is to create a GWP Report in Makersite with the required product or supply chain data. This could be for your whole company, or a specific product digital twin.

Once a report has been created in Makersite, in the Sidebar, to the right of the report page, there will be a URL link for the Power BI report. This link can be copied & pasted into a Power BI to view & Interact with.

To create a GWP Report in Makersite, follow the steps in the Open Model in GWP Pivot FAQ.

Once the report has completed, there will be a Power BI URL link created for the report. Copy & paste this into the Power BI application.

Paste the link into Power BI as shown in the Microsoft Power BI documentation - Connect to Web Pages.

When the report is open in Power BI, the Overview page will be shown.

The BI Dashboard is designed to interrogate data from Makersite in a flexible & intuitive manner.

On the Overview tab of the dashboard there are two drop down boxes in the top left corner, labelled 'Site Name' & 'Spend Class Hierarchy', these two Selectors are used to manipulate the data across the dashboard tabs. They work as an advanced filter, to facilitate investigation into a detailed view of how your products & supply chain are performing, from a climate impact perspective.

Either one can have a selection, or both can have a selection, they can be adjusted at any time on any of the tabs & the data will live update to reflect the new settings.

If neither have been set, then the data will be the total for your product, site or company, depending on how the report in Makersite has been setup.

Beneath the Selectors on the overview page, are three data objects, 'Total Impact', 'Global Warming Potential [kgCO2eq] by Data Source', & 'Total Mass by Data Source'.

All three will update based on what has been set in the two Selectors.

Total Impact

This shows the sum total of the Global Warming Potential [kgCO2eq].

Global Warming Potential [kgCO2eq] by Data Source

Shown as a pie chart, this shows the breakdown of how the data has been calculated.

There are four methods in Makersite:

Total Mass by Data Source

Shown as a pie chart, this shows the same calculations as above, but for the mass of your imported product or process.

To clear any settings in the Selector drop downs, hover your mouse pointer over the drop down & a white eraser symbol will appear in the top right corner, click this to clear the drop down.

All of the data objects across all tabs, can be hovered over to show further detail about the data being used, a black box will appear showing any additional info relating to that particular dataset.

Below the data objects (or to the left if you are viewing in 'Read Mode') are the dashboard tabs, each of these will take you to a specific page with additional visual tools:

Bar graph showing top 5 Spend Categories by percentage of GWP, the larger the bar height, the larger proportion of the total GWP the Spend Category contributes, this gives an overview of the areas of the business that have the highest climate impact.

The default view is the most top level data, hovering over the graph area will show a menu in the top right corner, where there are options to 'Drill Up' or 'Drill Down' into the data.

To Drill Down, click on the down arrow symbol, this will activate 'Drill Mode', you can then click on the a dataset bar on the graph to chose where to Drill Down into. The graph will then change to show the next level down in the Spend Hierarchy.

To Drill Up, click on the up arrow symbol, this will take you back to the previous level.

Bar graph showing top 5 Spend Categories by percentage of price.

The pricing data comes directly from transaction imports in Makersite.

The same tools as on the 'Buying Category' tab can be used to manipulate the graph.

Bar graph showing top 5 Spend Categories by percentage of mass.

The pricing data comes directly from BOM imports in Makersite.

The same tools as on the 'Buying Category' tab can be used to manipulate the graph.

Bar graph showing the top 10 suppliers by GWP in kgCO2eq.

This gives an overview of the suppliers in your supply chain that contribute the most to GWP, each supplier can then be drilled into to find which products or processes are the contributing factors to the suppliers climate impact.

The Forecast tab can be used to compare current data with future targets, or to see what Year on Year (YoY) reductions are required to hit potential targets.

Note: The data on this page is NOT from any Forecast Scenarios created in Makersite, the graph uses imported data for the current year, & the slider on this page sets the future year bar amounts.

In the top right corner, the 'YoY Reduction %' slider can be manually set to adjust the graph to show the effect on future years.

This can be used in conjunction with set trend lines on the graph to see what is required to achieve them e.g. if there is a target set for a 40% reduction in CO2 across the company by the year 2030, the YoY Reduction % can be adjusted to find the yearly targets to reach that goal within the timeframe.

This graph cannot be drilled into, however filters can be set using the menu in the top right corner, as with other graphs.

A scatter plot showing 'GWP/Mass' versus 'Unit Weight' for Spend Classes. The diameter of the data points represents the GWP contribution for each Spend Class. The 'Unit Weight' is the total mass for all components in a Spend Class.

This graph is useful for reviewing large datasets all together in one view, it provides a simple visual way to carry out QA on the datasets. Sanity checking the numbers to determine whether they make sense or not e.g. If a product is known to contain a large proportion of heavy steel sheet material, & a small number of plastics fasteners, if this graph does not show the correct relationship between these two categories i.e. if they are in similar locations on the graph, indicating the masses are similar or the plastic fasteners have a higher value, then there is likely an issue with the imported data or the AI mapping in Makersite & this would need to be reviewed & corrected on the Makersite platform.

To investigate further, right click on any of the circles on the graph & select 'Show as a table' from the menu list. This will load a table view below the main graph, showing the line items within the Spend Class.

To return to the 'Validation' page, click on 'Back to Report' in the top left corner of the page.