Digital transformation is no longer a choice, but a necessity for companies aiming to stay competitive. For a large, established organization like Mercedes-Benz Brazil, this journey involved tackling the challenge of integrating data from historically departmentalized systems to drive business innovation and achieve new levels of efficiency. This led to a strategic partnership with Aquarela Analytics to build an Enterprise Data Lakehouse, a project that transformed how the company uses data and positioned IT as a key business enabler.

Overcoming Data Silos and Finding Value

Like many companies operating for many years, Mercedes-Benz’s initial systems were designed to meet the specific needs of individual areas. However, it became clear that the real value lay in combining data across different departments. The central challenge was how to unite this disparate data effectively to enable insightful decision-making. This realization spurred the creation of an initial, more embryonic Data Lake, which served as a proof of concept and a learning experience, helping the team understand limitations and build support for the next step.

The Airport Metaphor: A Guiding Vision

To materialize the concept for a new, more robust system, an impactful metaphor was used: the airport. Hugo Araújo, IT Manager for production applications at Mercedes-Benz Brazil, explained this analogy. An airport must operate continuously and efficiently, managing different types of “planes” (data systems/applications), controlling bandwidth and runway size (infrastructure and capacity), and ensuring real-time operations. This vision guided the project team in developing what is technically known as an Enterprise Data Lakehouse. It’s “Enterprise” because it’s connected across the company’s infrastructure with authentication and security, and a “Data Lake” because it loads production data from all areas. Crucially, it also supports real-time applications, involving not just ingestion but also operations like recording, reading, and competition. The airport metaphor emphasized the critical, non-stop nature of the system, essential for linking to a smart factory and generating real-time inputs.

Learn more about this project and the airport metaphor by watching the full podcast episode here:

Strategic Choices: Open Source and Independence

A pivotal architectural decision during the project was the adoption of an entirely open source stack. This move removed reliance on expensive licenses and, more importantly, granted Mercedes-Benz total independence over their infrastructure. Previously, the company depended on external partners even for simple tasks like ingesting a data table. The new environment empowers the internal team to manage ingestions and internal governance, opening a wide range of opportunities for business areas and fostering analytics and artificial intelligence exponentially. Marcos Santos, CEO of Aquarela Analytics, highlights this capability to “launch, manage and analyze their data internally” as a key outcome.

Building Trust Through Shared Governance and Security

Implementing an enterprise-level system requires strong governance and security. Mercedes-Benz highly values information security. The project faced the significant challenge of controlling user access based on security levels, ensuring that different profiles, from data scientists to factory operators, could use the Data Lake securely. The solution involved deep integration with Mercedes-Benz’s Active Directory and using tagging to limit access to sensitive data fields without restricting entire tables. This robust security is vital, especially considering compliance requirements like LGPD in Brazil and GDPR in Germany.

Furthermore, a conscious decision was made to create shared governance between IT and business areas. This approach breaks down traditional silos where IT acts only as support. Shared governance ensures that business users understand IT limitations regarding security and mission-critical systems, making them aware of the impact their developments might have. This transparent, shared decision-making process effectively brought “Shadow IT” into a documented, collaborative environment, shedding light on previously informal processes.

Tangible Impact and Competitive Advantage

“Global data indicates that a stoppage at an automotive plant can cost from 25 thousand to 250 thousand dollars per hour. If we consider only the lower end of this range, one hour of downtime costs about 140 thousand reais. By reducing total downtime by 1%, as the Data Lake House allows, a saving of 11 million reais per year is already projected—considering only unscheduled stops. Furthermore, there are continuous operational gains that can increase this number even more in the medium and long term” explains Marcos Santos, CEO of Aquarela Analytics.

Beyond cost savings, the Data Lakehouse has transformed IT into a strategic business partner and innovation enabler. It allows for much more assertive and faster decision-making by integrating and analyzing vast volumes of data from across the company, including real-time data from factory IoT sensors. This enhanced analytical capability and speed are crucial competitive advantages in the automotive sector. The ability to ingest and manage factory IoT data in real-time means the Data Lakehouse has truly become the “heart” of the industrial operation.

The Future: Scaling the Ecosystem

Looking ahead, the focus is on further evolving governance and expanding the ecosystem. The Data Lakehouse is designed to ingest even more systems to enable faster, more accurate decision-making and implement additional AI solutions. A key aspect is its role as a hub that facilitates collaboration with external partners. Specialized partners with expertise in specific areas, like chassis algorithms, can now plug into the Data Lakehouse, securely access relevant data via the tagging system, and contribute their solutions to help solve complex engineering issues. This mirrors the automotive industry’s culture of managing complex supplier ecosystems, now extended to the IT domain.

Conclusion

The Mercedes-Benz Brazil Data Lakehouse project, built in partnership with Aquarela Analytics, demonstrates a successful digital transformation journey. By addressing data silos, adopting innovative architecture principles guided by the airport metaphor, leveraging open source technology for independence, establishing shared governance and robust security, and focusing on tangible business outcomes, Mercedes-Benz has achieved significant efficiency gains, cost savings, and a stronger competitive position.

For other IT managers considering similar projects, the advice from Hugo Araújo is clear: recognize that Analytics and AI is a journey, not a quick fix. Start small, demonstrating the concrete benefits brought to the business – showing, for instance, how it helps “make another truck leave the production line”. By consistently showing value, you can build support and scale your infrastructure towards a robust solution like the Data Lakehouse. This strategic, value-driven approach is key to successful modernization in any industry.

What is Aquarela Advanced Analytics?

Aquarela Analytics is the winner of the CNI Innovation Award in Brazil and a national reference in the application of corporate Artificial Intelligence in the industry and large companies. Through the Vorteris platform and the DCM methodology, it serves important clients such as Embraer (aerospace), Scania, Mercedes-Benz, Randon Group (automotive), SolarBR Coca-Cola (food retail), Hospital das Clínicas (healthcare), NTS-Brasil (oil and gas), Auren,SPIC Brasil (energy), Telefônica Vivo (telecommunications), among others.

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