The auxiliary devices are the nervous system of Elements Connect's operations, playing a vital role in tracking data and keeping a network of users in sync.
Design a network of tools for optimizing contract manufacturing operational workflows.
Starting in the summer of 2023, I began working at Elements Connect as a Product Designer, leading the design of innovative software tools deployed to various products like tablet based Management and Timekeeping tools, as well as informational data displays. The main challenges were time constraints, the lack of a design system, and the learning curve of a new industry. Through ongoing observational studies and research with manufacturing facilities and by documenting and sharing my work through active communication and regular feedback with the product and business team I was able to overcome the challenges.
The user group,
Contract Manufacturers.
I met regularly with various user groups from each level of the chain of command to build an understanding of day-to-day responsibilities and the types of situations that arise. Contract manufacturing projects can involve hundreds of temporary workers which means careful planning and management of resources is the key focus to keeping operations running smoothly.
The tasks, fulfilling
manufacturing contracts.
Agencies fulfill workforce requests of manufacturers and invoice for the labor provided. I was able to frame the various problems we intended to tackle by aligning scope with our business requirements. Our product handles the management and fulfillment of labor requests, and provides clarity through tracking data for accurate invoicing, saving money and providing peace of mind.
The tool, Elements
Connect Staffing.
The Elements Connect Staffing makes manufacturing operations easier by consolidating plans, schedules, timesheets and invoices for all the production takes place. In order for the system to operate smoothly it requires accurate tracking and when planning is done in advance, it allows operations to be conducted smoothly. Processes in place can provide automation, but missing data requires reconciliation.
Create tools that are scalable, flexible, user-friendly and improve operational efficiency while finding a balance between user experience and achieving business goals for a system of users.
I aimed to create a suite of products with omnichannel access to facilitate manufacturing operations going beyond traditional ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning).
• Missing their clock ins
• Staff working unplanned overtime
• Production line downtime
Managers are expected to capture the details of these events. If the data is not captured accurately or has gaps, their is no way to validate what occurred. This is critical to making sure the labor is paid according to the work performed as well as improving planning for operations going forward.
The goal was to enable the various actors involved in each activity to perform their tasks effortlessly, making informed decisions without the need for manual records or intervention by providing multiple avenues of status and schedule visibility while incorporating the right amount of friction and cues to encourage correctly following procedures.
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Lots of time was spent interviewing, observing and documenting the processes, activities and situations that occur. Following the procedures from the acceptance of contracts, to the planning of manufacturing schedules down to how the production floor executes functions on a weekly basis provided insight into the steps taken and how production is managed at every stage. Accommodations had to be made for the development of the software to provide the flexibility to serve a variety of clients with different operating models.
While working on the user research and testing of products, I noticed issues with compliance and organization; workers would often fail to clock in or out properly, which made it difficult for managers to approve the hours worked. On top of that, the resource management of the workforce and the distribution and attendance for these workers was messy and unclear.
I took these observations and led discussions with product managers to propose information displays that could reduce occurrences of unresolved exceptions and deviations from plans as well as directing workers around large facilities.
To provide users with an easy-to-use setup process that allows flexible configuration for functionality and compliance, I set the goal of streamlining the configuration process while establishing a templatized structure to keep the process simple and scalable. The concepts I introduced were "Templates" generic mappings of data, formatted for visual clarity as "Channels", company specific customized data displays, and "Programs" that allow the data channels to be organized into sequences to enable displays to be multipurpose and flexible.
In order to scale up the management of these displays to flexibly address a variety of use cases, the content and device relationships needed to be handled in one place. From device registration, to providing support and making updates to the displays requires developing a system to facilitate these deployments for a number of separate entities. To address this, I created an administrative registry process and management tool for devices while providing users with a streamlined and hierarchical platform for configuring content and associating devices with labels and descriptions to provide clarity for the utility of each.
I aimed to expand the capabilities of the tracking devices to suite a flexible set of needs for a multiple types of users while gathering accurate contextual data about the organization of operations.
When organizations conduct production simultaneously for a variety of customers, the accuracy with which labor costs can be attributed become very difficult to parse accurately without intensive managerial record keeping. Based on the research of manufacturers, labor costs would often be estimated when determining pricing for products produced in the facility for each of the customer contracts. This problem meant that manufacturers would have little confidence in the accuracy of their specific labor costs associated with different products. In order to address these problems, I had to incorporate features into our tracking devices to handle hierarchical locations to capture a new level of detail required for providing this contextual clarity to labor costs.
Planning Changes
Client would now be requesting temps at certain levels within these predefined locational hierarchies. For simple organizations this could happen at the site level but with larger organizations with greater complexity, these requests could happen at deeper levels, from a department level down to specific areas and even individual lines.
Making requests with this level of location specificity allows for accurate tracking of expenses when it comes time to invoice for production of products that may vary between customers. The production may be spread across any number of lines, rooms, areas, departments and sites with some mixing going on, making the ability to distinguish nearly impossible without requesting and tracking temp labor with this specificity.
Time-Tracking Changes
When it comes to managing the timesheets for the requested workers, supervisors and managers need the same ability to perform their tasks with the same location specificity when managing workers across these locations. Their responsibilities range from verifying, adjusting and approving timesheets while the work is performed so when it comes time to invoice, all the data referenced is accurate and verified. New features would be introduced that allow clients to see the data for staff based on area, line, department, and site.
In order to understand the new logic being introduced and to layout the user flows and processes involved in these contextual improvements, I spent time creating flow charts and scenario mapping the various cases that would enable proper handling of temp workers being allocated and tracking their work across these hierarchical locations. The process mapping for the new features that incorporate location based scanning and integration with the information displays was helpful for me and my team to understand how the devices would be used to keep labor resources managed across production lines in large manufacturing facilities.
To design improvements to the time-clock scanners, I created flow diagrams to capture the required functionality for various user journeys.
I created a scenario map to layout the various circumstances workers would encounter depending on their scheduled locations and current status.
Once I had mapped the functionality and user journeys, I was able to mockup new time-clock scanners with the intended functionality an documentation for handing off to developers. Future development of these scanners included a relational aspect with information displays intended for at-the-line attendance tracking. For this use case, I created a journey map showcasing the relationships spatially for workers moving from a standby pool, being assigned by supervisors and taking attendance at their assigned production lines.
What I learned
From going on-site to visit some of the large scale manufacturers and interviewing the directors that oversee their production, I learned about the scale and difficulty related with monitoring the status of each line in relation to the current staff that has been allocated to run them. Just a subset of these lines can span the distance of entire football fields, and take considerable time to navigate in order to monitor. Through these findings, I addressed this problem of scale in relation to monitoring by creating information displays that integrate with time-tracking situated at each line.
In order to provide a good user experience for managers on-site, beyond the capacity to track staff at given locations, I designed functionality for handing a variety of use cases related to the management of the staff that is able to be performed at each location. From badge registration to handling transfers and other temp assignments as changes happen day-to-day, managers would be able to perform these actions alongside the staff on the production floor. Normally these operational changes would need to be performed from office spaces on workstations, but would now be able to be done at any of the time-tracking access points.
Supervisors can scan their badge to manage the active team at a given location or manage various requests.
Any permitted users can use the scanners to conveniently validate and register badges to various users.
Managing the active team allows supervisors to send and receive worker transfers to other lines to quickly handle unexpected changes.
Exception scans involve circumstances of workers requesting approval to start or end work early or late respectively, which can be approved at the line.
