At this company, all records of most parts of the manufacturing process were made and kept offline. This was necessary for security but limited efficiency by a great deal.

Samples of the documents that kept records of each step of the manufacturing process at this company.

With knowledge gained from user research and discussions with the stakeholders, I set out to create a detailed map of the information architecture. From this exercise, I was able to determine three overall modules the software would have: Inventory, Manufacturing, Quality Management. By analyzing the necessary functions of each of those modules, I mapped out all the pages that would be necessary underneath those.

I iterated upon this, meeting with the stakeholders to confirm that the architecture did align with the established processes.

After creating the User flow, I started working on creating the smaller components of the design system, such as clickable elements and section headings.

The first module I tackled was Stock + Inventory. One of the most important aspects of a manufacturing business is being able to track where items are at any given moment. Through creating the information architecture, I realized that Items could be divided into two main categories: Raw material or Finished Product. Either way they would need to have similar attributes: current amounts in possession and storage location. I kept in mind that Items as an object will eventually need to be added to specific instruction manuals for specific products.

A demonstration of how an Item could be selected, and all the attributes that would display about that item.

From there I moved onto Warehouse records. Warehouse would be a visual map, configured by calculating where an item was and the quantity.

Warehouse and Items were connected: one will affect the other.

While creating the flow, I spent a lot of time learning about the process of making a product at this company: from the moment the customer places an order to the moment it leaves the facility. That helped me visualize the overall structure of a Product object in the software, and what its attributes would need to be.

In this software, a Product would inherently have two main attributes: Bill of material (items required to make the product) and Procedures (all steps involved in making a product). Once the Product was added to a Project, its specific assigned Procedures would then create Work orders, which would assign employees to specific jobs and keep track of progress.

Connected to manufacturing a Product was a Project Page, which would house the records of the product manufacturing life cycle. Projects would also include information about the Project Quote provided to the client, the Sales order, and shipping information.

The Project Page provides a visual overview of the progress; managers move the progress along, verifying what needs to be verified and then assigning accordingly.

Through discussions with the company, I learned that another essential aspect of the manufacturing process was Quality Management. At this company, there were many established processes in place for checking and maintaining product quality, and they were keen on keeping it that way. I designed this module as a sort of template gallery, that would create documents based on the parameters provided.

Procedures could be created from a basic template, and then assigned to a specific product. That way when a Product is added to a work order, the specific Procedures belonging to it would be loaded as well.

Printed forms were necessary in this aspect of the business, so we decided that the main function of this module would be to store the forms in a digital and print format.

I maintained the basic structure of the example form I was given, slightly modified for user interaction.