Improving Quality Control With a Layer Process Audit Application

Alupress

Client Alupress

Year 2019

Role Ideation, UX, Custom Software Development

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"Through a very professional approach by B-works, supported by the SCRUM method, we were able to achieve the project goals for the development of a Layer Audit Process web app. In the process, B-works repeatedly showed us ways in which we could use synergies of our existing systems. Thus, a tool was created on which we can build various future applications."

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Summary

The Layer Process Audit (LPA) software was developed as a mobile application for conducting audits and assigning measures at plants in Italy, Germany and the U.S., as well as an admin dashboard for managing and assessing statistics.

Alupress operates Layer Process Audits (LPAs), a quality technique that focuses on observing and validating how products are made rather than inspecting finished products.

Project category: Digital Product

Title: Alupress Layer Process Audit Application

Client: Alupress AG, Italy

Industry: OEM

Objectives: Development of an LPA app that pulls employee data from SAP, enables shop floor employees to audit work stations through an intuitive user experience (UX), whose content can be dynamically entered and customized (e.g. audit questions), and directly displays the measures to be completed by the respective employee in the measures list in SharePoint Server 2016 via an API. In addition, the audit data should be displayed in a management dashboard and evaluated with benefit for quality control and management. The project goals included:

Facilitating the usability of the questionnaire: i.e. engagement of the end user performing the audit.
The app should work on all operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows Mobile) regardless of the device used (desktop, tablet, mobile).
The app should work at all Alupress locations (Italy, Germany, U.S.).
The collected data should be analyzable in order to track it sustainably and to be able to use it for quality management purposes.
In addition to the app, there should be a platform for tracking the fulfillment of the measures (dashboard).
Tracking of measures: measures for negative audit results (“NOK" answers) should appear in the respective employee's list of measures in SharePoint 2016.

B-works role: Ideation, Strategy, UX/UI Design, Software Development

Technology: Laravel (backend), Angular 6 (desktop frontend), Ionic (mobile frontend), Sass (shared style sheets between desktop and mobile), Cypress (testing automation for business logic), API to SAP, connection to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016

Project size: 200 days with 5 B-works team members

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Our work

For this project, in a first step, B-works assembled the Scrum Development Team, consisting of a UX Designer, 3 Full-Stack Developers and a Senior Scrum Product Owner.
The project was handled with Scrum from conception to development until go-live.

Process and Tools:

The following factors were decisive for the successful and timely implementation of the project:

Strategy workshop with the Alupress quality department to understand the needs of the end users (shop floor staff, quality management, executive management)
Definition of possible solutions and validation with LPA department
Technical Ecosystem Check of the existing IT landscape
Creating epics and user stories and defining the scope for the MVP of the application
Creating mock-ups of the application and dashboard
Assembling a 5-person team consisting of a senior product owner, a UX designer, and three full-stack developers
Progress reports with the client every 2 weeks, following the sprint review
2-week sprints with sprint review, retrospectives and planning
Back-end development with Laravel
Front-end development with Angular 6 (desktop) and Ionic (mobile)
Monthly time tracking and budget reporting with Jira
Agile testing by B-works, ongoing acceptance by the client and parallel bug fixing by the development team

Technologies employed:

Laravel
Angular 6
Ionic
Saas (shared style sheets between desktop and mobile)
Cypress (Testing Automation for Business Logic)
API to SAP for pulling employee data
Connection to Microsoft SharePoint Server for the storage of measures (To Do's) for employees

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Key Benefits for the Client

This project faced the challenge of how to digitize the quality control of workstations on the shop floor. Before the introduction of the LPA app, the audit was done by filling out a paper printout, after which the paper printout was scanned and filed. Due to the (paper) organization, the data and measures resulting from the audit could not be utilized and implemented or their progress thus monitored.

The digitization of the Alupress LPA process was divided into three milestones:

Development of the MVP of the app and beta testing at the Bressanone site in Italy.
Development of an audit dashboard to leverage and display audit data.
After the app and dashboard were validated, accepted and valued by the organization, development of a high-fidelity design to give the app the final graphical polish and operational roll-out to all sites in Italy, Germany and in the U.S.

The resulting key benefits for the client:

Scalable, user-friendly and intuitive LPA app that can be used by factory staff for workstation audits and that works on all operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows) and at all Alupress sites worldwide.
Comprehensive management dashboard that allows Layer Process owners and management to analyze and use the collected data for quality management.
Admin cockpit to track actions taken for "not ok" (NOK) audit results and which assigns the actions to the respective employee in their action list in SharePoint Server 2016 for completion.
Connection to SAP so that each employee can automatically log in with the correct permission and create audits, assign measures and view historical data
Delivery within budget and go-live date, 6 months after project launch

Improving Quality Control With a Layer Process Audit Application

Alupress

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