NVH Engineering: From Data Chaos to High-Performance Dashboards

Finalist at the Golden Grot Awards 2026

From tool chaos to high performance: Our dashboard for vehicle test engineers at a leading OEM was recognized as a finalist in the global Grafana Community competition. Congratulations to our team!

What are the Golden Grot Awards?

The Golden Grot Awards recognize the most creative and impactful dashboards within the Grafana ecosystem each year. The competition serves as a platform for the Grafana community to explore the boundaries of open-source software: from classic IT observability to highly specialized industrial applications.

The Challenge: Complexity in NVH Engineering

NVH stands for Noise, Vibration, Harshness: a demanding field in modern vehicle development. Automotive NVH engineers who want to localize specific noises in prototypes at 3,000 RPM often work with specialized NVH software and are traditionally stuck in a "tool chaos." While these tools are powerful for deep-dive analysis, they make it difficult to get a quick overview due to slow loading times and manual search processes across different measurements.

Our task for a leading company in the automotive sector: to develop dashboards that make problems immediately identifiable without diving deep into their specialised software.

Technical Depth: The Data Pipeline

NVH measurement data in ADAM ODS format (ATFx) reaches frequencies of up to 48,000 Hz. Since Grafana is not natively built for this, the core of the solution lies in a custom-built data pipeline:

• ETL-Pipeline (Extract, Transform, Load): We developed a cloud-native data serving layer based on Parquet and Apache Iceberg, optimised for high-performance usage with NVH data.
  
• Pre-aggregationen: Core data calculations are precomputed to minimise interface loading times.
• Integrated Ergonomics: The dashboard consolidates 18 data sources into a unified, scalable user interface.

It's not just the range of functions that impresses, it's the ergonomics. We replace fragmented workflows with a user interface for engineers who can't afford any delays.

Our solution: A digital twin of vehicle acoustics

We have developed high-performance dashboards specifically designed to meet the needs of test engineers. The foundation is a highly scalable AWS architecture that transforms raw test bench data into an interactive analysis environment.

In a central overview dashboard, we synchronise data from 17 high-resolution microphones with the vehicle's ECU. This provides a 360-degree view of the vehicle's acoustic performance. This is equivalent to a digital twin of the measurement setup, which consolidates all relevant information in real time.

This dashboard is optimised for a detailed analysis of individual microphones during an NVH vehicle test. If an engineer notices an anomaly in the overview dashboard, a single click leads directly to the detailed acoustic parameters of the relevant microphone.

To precisely isolate the cause of an acoustic anomaly, relevant measurement signals from the vehicle’s ECU (engine control unit) can be directly added into the analysis. The integrated Melody Range spectrum makes increases in sound intensity at specific frequencies immediately visually identifiable. This transforms abstract data into an intuitive basis for decision-making.

The result: Speed ​​as an innovation driver

The customer feedback was clear: NVH engineers with over ten years of experience confirmed that this dashboard works significantly faster and more intuitively than their previous tools.

With the right architecture, a data serving layer in combination with Grafana, even highly complex industrial data can be translated into clear visualisations. A complicated problem doesn't need a complicated UI - it needs a better way to look at the data.

LET'S TALK

Do you work with complex industrial or process data and wonder if Grafana could be the right visualisation layer for you?

We translate highly-complex measurement and process data into clear, fast, decision-ready visualisations. Book a no-strings call with our experts and we'll show you what's possible.

Contact us!