Digitisation of a Brewery plant in Germany
Bringing the proposal to life in accordance with the Industry 4.0 solution as proposed by BCG, with the objective of having the plant and its workers monitored and run with the use of the App, either remotely or locally
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Research & Ideation
Approach
To study the plant's blueprint and machinery details and their order, to be able to propose an effective solution. This phase of study unfortunately happened during the holiday season, hence, very few interviews for users and stakeholders could be scheduled. The idea was to understand their first level of daily responsibilities and pain points which would form the basis for the Diary Method that would be applied to this project.
Manual Assignments
The process of manually assigning a technician the work to repair a faulty machine was tedious and cumbersome requiring scanning of physical log books and making entries.
Unforeseen Machine Failures
There was no way to track machine health except for technicians to manually check the whole machine and that also created lot of down time.
Physical Attributes
The technicians mostly had enormous hands with broad fingers, and majority of them were not tech savvy.
Technical knowledge of Users
Majority of the staff were 40+ in age and not tech savvy, hence needed a simple flow for easy comprehension.
Unforeseen Machine Failures
There was no way to track machine health except for technicians to manually check the whole machine and that also created lot of down time.
Holliday Time
The testing and deliveries had to be planned meticulously as they were being done during the year-end holiday season
Resource Crunch
A sense of panic started prevailing among stakeholders as very few resources were available during the holiday season and managing those resources was a big challenge.
Top Level Managers
To have access to all data but not responsible to make changes or grant rights
Managers
To possess full departmental access and be in charge of allocating tasks, monitoring productivity, assigning technicians, etc.
Staff
To hold access to all data but who is not in charge of making changes or giving permissions.
Personas
Challenges
Key Observations/Pain Points
The key pain points emerged on combining both generative and diary studies
Troubleshooting Time
The functions of every machine differed from the other which led even the experts to refer to the manual.
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Planning & Prototyping
Approach/ Set Process
To work with the waterfall method due to resource crunch and all of them not being available at the same time. The focus was to complete one task at a time. Before kickstarting the project, the idea was to concept test the solution and get it validated by stakeholders and users to get a final sign off on the scope
3D Facility Mapping
Internal cameras to be used to map the entire facility allowing for real-time updates, as a result users could get complete insight into all activities in the plant.
AR Troubleshooting
To create 3D representations for all the machines, and each one to be individually scanned allowing the personnel to access real-time trouble shooting instructions as they worked on individual machines.
Machinery Health prediction
Each machine's data will be logged, and depending on how well it performs, our system will be able to gauge its health and set up automatic maintenance to minimise unscheduled downtime.
User Testing
Due to lack of resources, testing individual wireframes and prototypes was difficult, hence it led to the development of high resolution designs with an interactive prototype with number of pages and features all incorporated. A list of actions to be accomplished for each persona in order to test the prototype, was produced as part of the task guide. Each assignment was created as a scenario to test a certain aspect of the prototype. Subsequently, every user was given task instructions to complete them while noting any area of difficulty or uncertainty. Next, we evaluated the input following the test to discover problems if any or potential areas of improvement for the prototype
User Journey
To give stakeholders a holistic perspective of all processes, a whole user journey with all users & scenarios were combined to make it simpler for stakeholders to get bird's eye view on all processes without having to read a lot of paperwork.
Opportunities/Solutions
Based on the research and feasibility aspect, all the listed opportunities could not be implemented at the same time, hence there was a need to prioritize them in phases
Staff Management
The app allowed managers to delegate work, monitor tasks, manage payroll, track attendance, and offer insights into employee engagement.
Objective/Problem
To build a digital solution to increase the manufacturing productivity by reducing labor required to complete tasks and increasing the accuracy of the production processes.
My Role
To gather information on required functionalities from stakeholders and users, propose offerings of the application basis emerging technologies, and onboard the development team and have them aligned to the functionalities planned for the app.
Team Overview
UX & UI Designers: 4
Frontend & Backend Dev: 4,
Unity Developers: 3,
QC: 1
Project Type & Duration
iPad & Android Tablet App, AR/VR, Product Strategy, User Research, Testing.
UX Maturity: 7/10
Duration: 750 -800 Hours
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Design & Development
Approach/ Set Process
We made care to create sufficient documentation to be delivered to the agency because we would not be participating in the design phase at all. This was done to ensure that there would be no misunderstandings regarding the purpose and design of the product. We only recently became involved in order to perform an exhaustive analysis of the tool's functionality and flow.
Design Testing
It was important to run the heuristics of the designed tool and also ensure the usability was intact. These tests were also crucial to make sure the the understanding of the tool matched the expectation during the wireframing stage
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Final Output
25+
User Flows
30%
Increased Efficiency
Worked Closely with
Ashwathi Venugopalan
Global Brand Account Senior Manager, BCG
Curious to know more?
If you wish to know more about the project, you can contact me by email at mahesh.salaskar@gmail.com. I will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.
Screens/Designs used in the portfolio are sanitised to ensure that any references to the client, their identity or critical data are removed due to NDA signed with them.