KPI dashboards in SCADA systems - Mini Project: Build & Apply

KPI Dashboards

📖 Scenario: You work in a factory that uses a SCADA system to monitor machines. You want to create a simple dashboard that shows key performance indicators (KPIs) like uptime, production count, and error count for each machine.

🎯 Goal: Build a basic KPI dashboard data structure, add a configuration for alert thresholds, calculate which machines exceed error limits, and display the results.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called machines with exact machine names and their KPI values

Add a variable called error_threshold with the value 5

Use a for loop with variables machine and kpis to find machines with errors above error_threshold

Print the list of machines exceeding the error threshold exactly as shown

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Factories use SCADA systems to monitor machine health and production. KPI dashboards help operators quickly see which machines need attention.

💼 Career

DevOps and automation engineers often create monitoring dashboards and alerts to keep systems running smoothly and prevent downtime.

1

Create the initial KPI data

Create a dictionary called machines with these exact entries: 'MachineA': {'uptime': 98, 'production': 1500, 'errors': 3}, 'MachineB': {'uptime': 95, 'production': 1200, 'errors': 7}, 'MachineC': {'uptime': 99, 'production': 1600, 'errors': 2}

SCADA systems

# Create the machines dictionary with exact KPI values
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a dictionary with machine names as keys and another dictionary for their KPIs as values.

2

Add error threshold configuration

Add a variable called error_threshold and set it to 5

SCADA systems

machines = {
    'MachineA': {'uptime': 98, 'production': 1500, 'errors': 3},
    'MachineB': {'uptime': 95, 'production': 1200, 'errors': 7},
    'MachineC': {'uptime': 99, 'production': 1600, 'errors': 2}
}
# Add error_threshold variable below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

This variable will help us check which machines have too many errors.

3

Find machines exceeding error threshold

Use a for loop with variables machine and kpis to create a list called high_error_machines containing machine names where kpis['errors'] is greater than error_threshold

SCADA systems

machines = {
    'MachineA': {'uptime': 98, 'production': 1500, 'errors': 3},
    'MachineB': {'uptime': 95, 'production': 1200, 'errors': 7},
    'MachineC': {'uptime': 99, 'production': 1600, 'errors': 2}
}
error_threshold = 5
# Create high_error_machines list using a for loop
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Check each machine's errors and add the machine name to the list if errors are above the threshold.

4

Display machines with high errors

Write a print statement to display the list high_error_machines exactly as: Machines with high errors: ['MachineB']

SCADA systems

machines = {
    'MachineA': {'uptime': 98, 'production': 1500, 'errors': 3},
    'MachineB': {'uptime': 95, 'production': 1200, 'errors': 7},
    'MachineC': {'uptime': 99, 'production': 1600, 'errors': 2}
}
error_threshold = 5
high_error_machines = []
for machine, kpis in machines.items():
    if kpis['errors'] > error_threshold:
        high_error_machines.append(machine)
# Print the high_error_machines list
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use an f-string to format the output exactly as shown.