About ThroughPut Inc
This product enables the discovery of bottlenecks within production lines and prioritizes them based on their criticality. Powered by Artificial Intelligence, operation managers can read and derive remediation insights 600 times faster than traditional practices, thereby saving time and money.
My role
Lead Experience Designer
Requirements gathering, Product roadmap, Stakeholder workshop, Ideation, Shaping the MVP, Interaction Design, Product Pitch, Dev support
Collaborators
Ali H. Raza, CEO at ThroughPut
Bhaskar Ballapragada, CTO at ThroughPut
Anzar Kamdar, Head of Data Science at ThroughPut
ThroughPut Inc Named A Top 10 Supply Chain Management Solution Provider 2021 by Manufacturing Tech Insights
June 16, 2021
Originally published on PRNewswire
To eliminate industrial bottlenecks that lead to the production of damaged goods across the globe, resulting in losses upto $10 trillion annually
The vision
Operation Managers that are responsible for the efficient functioning of a manufacturing unit
They are subject to high stress environments that demand quick decision making
Who is this product for?
How might we assist an operations team in efficiently managing a manufacturing unit and guide them in making effective decisions during cut-throat situations
Problem statement
3 Stakeholder workshops 2 Interviews 3 days of Secondary research
Key activities
We interviewed the key stakeholders to understand their perspective
Chief executive officer, chief technology officer, and the data scientist
We conducted a 3 day stakeholder workshop in which we collectively sketched mind maps on a white-board, discussed the actors with the ecosystem, studied their research insights, and ideated on initial design concepts
The organization shared their research insights that played a key role in understanding the challenges and opportunities within the system
The challenges
Expensive affair
Experts charge hefty amounts to investigate and detect bottlenecks
Waste of time & money
Delays caused by manual investigation result in the damages getting amplified
Poor remediation
In cut-throat situations, poor decisions are bound to take place that prove fatal in the future
Opportunity areas
Problem solver
The product should ease the operations tasks by analyzing the existing data to generate the efficient decisions
Seamless integration
The data ingestion process must be seamless to ensure quick adoption
Intuitive interface
The product must be intuitive to use to avoid the need for any training
The operations manager
Understanding the key actor within this system
After diverging in our study, we narrowed our focus on the operation managers since they have a lot at stake in terms of daily processes and challenging decisions in cut-throat situations
Shaping the prototype
The stakeholder workshops and daily stand-up meetings provided the design direction
Following that, we derived the experience principles and subsequent product design
Experience principles
Cause and effect
The operation managers should be informed about the consequences of their decisions
Progressive disclosure
The system must guide them into taking important decisions rather than leaving them overwhelmed with multiple tasks
Future-proofing
The system must not only assist the operations in remediating bottlenecks but also future-proof the unit
Key features for the MVP
Prioritization of bottlenecks
The system will guide the operation managers to focus on the critical processes first
System’s recommendations
The system will suggest remediation insights for the operations manager to resolve the bottlenecks
The operation managers can dive deep into the cause of malfunction and understand how to prevent future bottlenecks
Root cause analysis
Guidance for the operations manager
The product is designed to be self-explanatory since the majority of the employees aren’t comfortable integrating technology into their work
Due to the Non-disclosure agreement, the visual design listed below is for the initial concepts
Visual experience design
Dashboard
Process overview
Manufacturing companies reported ~65% reduction in bottlenecks
The outcome
ThroughPut Inc. Recognized as a Finalist of Microsoft for Startups 2020 Microsoft Partner of the Year
July 13, 2020
Originally published on PRNewswire
Challenges faced and what I’ve learnt
Reflections
Incorporating a vast amount of requirements right at the inception stage created an ambiguous situation during the project kick-off
Bottlenecks
Stakeholder workshops spanning three days helped us narrow down the key actors and requirements to produce a compelling MVP
Learnings
Now that the operation manager focused MVP was crafted, we need to include the next set of actors to evolve the product further. Even though their respective flows weren’t included in the MVP, their cause and effect within the system wasn’t overlooked