What Is a Data Quality Chip? EDGEBIC Definition

A data quality chip is a small badge on a dashboard tile that tells you where the number came from, so you know how much to trust it. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions, every KPI tile carries one of four chips: Live for an auto-captured real event, Plan for a scheduler projection, Estimate for a heuristic or manual figure, and Offline for a source not yet captured. The chip is what separates a number that reflects what actually happened from one that reflects what is merely expected.

This entry is part of the EDGEBIC glossary series. For the broader vocabulary, see the manufacturing glossary. Data quality chips appear across EDGEBIC's dashboards, including the SQDC tiles on the standup board.

How a Data Quality Chip Works

A dashboard number without provenance is a trap. A 94 percent OTIF figure could be a logged outcome, a forecast from the current plan, or a placeholder, and a planner acting on it needs to know which. The data quality chip carries that context with the number, everywhere the number appears.

EDGEBIC uses four values, each with a color convention:

Read it as a trust ladder. Live is the strongest: the number came from a real event the system captured, so it is a fact you can report. Plan is a projection from the current schedule, a forecast to steer by rather than a logged result. Estimate is weaker still, a heuristic or a value someone typed, fine for internal use but flagged so it does not masquerade as measured. Offline is the honest bottom: the metric exists but its data source does not yet, so the tile shows a dash rather than a fabricated figure.

That last value is the one that matters most for trust. It would be easy to hide a tile with no data, but a missing tile looks like a bug. An Offline chip says plainly that the metric is real and the data is not there yet, which is a very different message and a far more useful one.

A Concrete Example

Take three tiles on a Monday dashboard, each carrying its chip:

• OTIF, 94.2 percent, Live chip. This came from real completed orders, so it is a fact a planner can put in a report.
• SQDC Delivery, on-time-in-full, Plan chip. This is computed from the current plan's order-end versus due dates, so it is a projection: a good steer, but a forecast, not a logged outcome.
• SQDC Safety, dash, Offline chip. There is no incident log to compute from, so the tile is honestly blank rather than showing a green number that would imply a perfect safety record nobody measured.

Three tiles, three levels of trust, and the chips make the difference visible without anyone having to remember which metric is sourced how. The same OTIF figure with a Plan chip instead of Live would tell the planner to treat it as a forecast; with an Estimate chip, to caveat it before it leaves the building.

How EDGEBIC Uses Data Quality Chips

Chips ride on the KPI tiles across EDGEBIC's dashboards, alongside each tile's value, target, delta note, and a thirty-point sparkline. They are part of the same tile structure that also offers a hover explanation showing the full formula and source, so a planner can go from "what is this number" to "where did it come from" in one glance. The dashboards themselves are covered in EDGEBIC dashboards explained.

The discipline the chip enforces is provenance-with-the-number. EDGEBIC would rather show an Offline dash than a fake green, and rather mark a projection Plan than let it pass as measured, because a dashboard is only useful if its numbers can be trusted at face value. That same honesty runs through EDGEBIC's reporting, from the column glossary that explains every field to the chip that tells you whether the field is fact or forecast.