Optimized quality control through a layered process audit application

Layered Process Audit Software Development for Alupress

Client Alupress
Year 2019
Role Ideation, UX, Custom Software Development
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Layered Process Audit Software

The Layered Process Audit Software was developed as a mobile application for conducting audits and assigning measures, as well as an admin dashboard for managing and assessing statistics, at plants in the United States, Italy, and Germany

Alupress operates Layered 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 Layered Process Audit Software Application

Client: Alupress AG, Italy

Industry: OEM

Objectives: Development of a Layered Process Audit Tool (LPA) software application 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 (United States, Italy, and Germany).
  • 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, User Experience Design, User Interface 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: 5 B-works team members over 100 days

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How we designed and developed the Layered Process Audit Software application

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 of the Layered Process Audit Tool 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:

  1. Development of the MVP of the app and beta testing at the Bressanone site in Italy.
  2. Development of an audit dashboard to leverage and display audit data.
  3. 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 Layered Process Audit 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
alupress-header
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