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Enhanced Tracking, Perfect Parts: Connect Assemblers, Ensure Quality
Challenge
In modern fabrication processes, coordinating between multiple teams—such as designers, analysts, assemblers, and project managers—can be complex and prone to miscommunication. Manual tracking of parts, incomplete data sharing, and inefficient quality assurance procedures can lead to delays, costly errors, and wasted materials. The lack of a centralized platform to manage fabrication, assign responsibilities, and monitor quality creates bottlenecks that hinder project timelines and overall efficiency.
Objective
Facilitate seamless communication between user groups, ensuring that designs are clearly understood, parts are fabricated correctly, and quality standards are met.
Allow quality assurance teams to inspect parts at various stages, flag issues immediately, and address defects before final delivery.
Give project managers full visibility into the production pipeline, from design to final quality checks, helping them make informed decisions and avoid project delays.
Mobile App Parameters
This app is designed to streamline fabrication by connecting key stakeholders—designers, analysts, assemblers, quality assurance, and project managers—in one cohesive platform. In industries where precision and timely communication are critical, it eliminates the gaps between design, production, and quality assurance, ensuring that everyone stays aligned and informed.
The app boosts efficiency, reduces errors, and fosters accountability by assigning tasks, tracking part fabrication, and monitoring quality in real-time. It empowers each user group to collaborate seamlessly, optimizing workflows and enhancing overall productivity from concept to completion.
Initial Interviews
Working with fabricators and designers is very engaging. As projects pile up, project managers and middle management become integrated into receiving updates on the smallest of items complete to meet an incoming shipment or installation timeframe.
Assembler
Every day starts with a production meeting with the head staff promptly at 9 AM, with tasks assigned by the head production manager. Subsequent middle management swings by throughout the day to hear about parts updates. It's easy to handle the large parts involving a few crew members, but smaller easier parts are harder to track by batch.
Project Manager
There are three different facilities to get around. Getting updates on paper is slow and driving 10 minutes to each site becomes time-consuming. Working on multiple projects at once, if there are ways to manage these few projects in one go would help focus more on the task and less on getting to the activity site.
Production Manager
Seeing the progress of each project and reallocating resources accordingly would help strengthen project delivery timelines. It's still very paperwork driven and if that time could be automated would help relieve the time to focus on other important tasks such as detailing and Quality Assurance.
Quality Assurance
Paper trails are a key part of completing the work. Since most of the checking is away from the office, having to transfer the issues and verification digitally later on is a hassle. If there was a way to just press some buttons on a phone that will talk to a central database, add some comments, that would greatly diminish the task duplication.
Features
Compiling a list of user requests, the focus of the design confirms the few ideas that must be considered:
A central database to identify each part and assembly's condition. This will help address who will be next to inquire about completing the fabrication process ready for shipment
Opportunity for instant feedback on the condition of parts and assemblies by fabricators or assemblers. This will streamline notes to a more prominent
Allow for the understanding of project progress. Integrate with Gantt information to create progress benchmarks. Allow users to fill in the information to determine if the rate is hitting the benchmark.
Wireframe and Design
This wireframe represents the task assignment dashboard, where project managers can assign tasks to specific user groups and monitor progress. The layout prioritizes an at-a-glance view of active projects, with clickable task cards showing due dates, assigned users, and status. A drag-and-drop interface allows managers to adjust timelines and reassign tasks easily.
The wireframes represent a few parts of the dashboards I worked on. From user logging in for the first time to some of the interactions fabricators and assemblers have, the goal is to
To establish user flow and content layout, I sketched out wireframes for screens that fabricators and assemblers would be involved with completing tasks and then creating comments as needed. Here are some initial sketches I developed for logging in as a first-time user to the app, along with how an interactive flow for some users will feel.
Design Mock-Ups
This dashboard interface allows project managers, designers, and assemblers to monitor the progress of part fabrication in real time. The clean, intuitive layout presents key metrics at a glance, including fabrication status, assigned tasks, and quality checks. The use of color coding improves visual clarity, highlighting completed items and comments, bottlenecks, and completion status. The design prioritizes ease of navigation, enabling users to swiftly access specific parts of the project, track changes, and view detailed progress logs.
The mobile interface is designed for quality assurance employees to inspect fabricated parts on the go. It provides an easy-to-use checklist with detailed part descriptions, inspection criteria, and space for comments or flagged issues. The design is optimized for fast, responsive interactions, allowing users to approve or reject parts based on inspection results. The intuitive design makes it easy to upload images of defects, track the part’s history, and communicate with assemblers instantly.
Data Graphs
The app leverages data-driven graphs, including histograms, line charts, and bar graphs, to offer users a comprehensive understanding of their fabrication process. By visually representing performance metrics, these graphs enable project managers, designers, and analysts to identify trends, monitor progress, and pinpoint inefficiencies in real-time.
The analyst panel, for example, has access to the growth of the project by projection from the Gantt chart. As fabricators and assemblers complete, they will provide real-time understanding of progress. Project Managers can assess the information and help plan with the production manager on resource management to get the project completed and accounted for.
To enhance usability, the graphs are interactive, allowing users to drill down into specific data points for a more detailed view. Hovering over a bar in the histogram, for example, can display the exact number of parts inspected or the percentage of tasks completed within a given timeframe. These dynamic interactions improve decision-making by providing actionable insights at every stage of fabrication.
Through data-driven visualizations, the app not only presents current metrics but also forecasts future trends. Predictive analytics can highlight potential delays or areas where the team may need to focus attention. This proactive approach ensures projects remain on track, and any risks are mitigated early.
Reflection and Next Steps
Throughout the design and development process of this fabrication tracking app, the focus has been on enhancing collaboration, improving efficiency, and providing real-time insights to all stakeholders involved in the manufacturing process. By addressing key challenges such as miscommunication between teams, inefficient tracking of parts, and gaps in quality assurance, the app successfully bridges these gaps with user-friendly interfaces and data-driven insights. The inclusion of dashboards, task assignment tools, role management, and data visualizations demonstrates a holistic approach to improving workflow transparency and accountability.
This solution reached its development stage with wireframes and a Figma prototype. Having completed a number of sequential edits, the project did not progress further in favor of other pressing projects. Though moving forward, several enhancements and new features can be considered to elevate the app’s functionality further:
Allow users to customize their dashboards based on specific roles or project requirements. This can enhance the user experience by making the most relevant data available at a glance for each user group.
Develop additional mobile-first features to better support assemblers and quality assurance teams who may need to perform tasks on the shop floor or in remote locations. This could include voice-to-text task updates and offline functionality.
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