TRANSITIONING OUR MANUFACTURING PRODUCT TO A MORE ROBUST TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM
Eliminating Errors and Accelerating Production with Mx
Feedback from line workers was overwhelmingly positive, with universal adoption of the changes requiring no additional training.
On the technology stack we were able to meet customer expectations of near-zero downtime.
Manufacturers operate their products 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To support this, a product that helps facilitate manufacturing must have near-zero downtime. However, with our legacy product, we struggled to meet this goal due to outdated technology and the need for regular system maintenance. The goal was to transition our manufacturing product to a more robust technology platform while enhancing its overall user experience and design.
My Contribution
Product strategy, product leadership, product design, vendor research, user research
The Team
Product design manager (me), 1 Sr. director of product management, 2 Sr. product designers, 1 Architect, 3 Developers, and 1 Researcher
Background
MasterControl is a leading Quality Management Platform. It helps more than 1000 highly regulated companies ensure high quality product development, manufacturing and compliance with digital process, data management, documentation and analytics.
As a Design Manager, my role involved collaborating with our Senior Director of Product Management on the manufacturing product space. Together, we audited the legacy product, analyzed users' jobs to be done, and identified product shortcomings through research. We then used these insights to make informed decisions about the design and development of the new product.
Responsibilities
Collaborated with the Senior VP of Product Management, Product Designers, Architects, and Developers to review user research and make data-driven decisions for the new product development.
Managed and provided guidance to Senior Product Designers.
Led both quantitative and qualitative research in partnership with our user researcher.
Problems to Solve
Address outdated technology challenges to deliver near-zero downtime, aligning with the standards set by our competitors.
Design an intuitive user experience that streamlines manufacturing processes, enabling users to bring their products to market more efficiently.
Challenges
Focusing on the execution phase first: We chose to prioritize the execution phase of the product over the configuration phase because most MasterControl Mx users interacted with the execution functionality when completing tasks related to their job on the manufacturing floor.
Addressing initial stakeholder concerns: Stakeholders initially expressed concerns about the changes to the product experience, questioning whether users would require additional training to adapt to the new design.
Actions Taken
Connected with users to gain insights into their struggles and pain points with the legacy product.
Conducted on-site visits with manufacturing partners to observe firsthand how they integrate our product into their manufacturing processes.
Identified technical solutions to address recurring maintenance and downtime challenges.
Following our research and discovery we:
Mapped user journeys: We developed detailed user journeys to understand the various tasks different users needed to complete within our manufacturing product.
Implemented micro frontends: On the technical side, our developers adopted a micro frontend architecture. This approach helps address maintenance and downtime challenges by enabling independent updates, deployments, and management of smaller, isolated parts of the application. As a result, changes to one section could be made without impacting the entire system, reducing the risk of widespread downtime.
The resulting transition to a new technology platform and improving the user experience, offered allowed user to complete production records more intuitive and at a high velocity.
Additional highlights
Despite the differences from the legacy product, the new design proved to be highly intuitive.
The speed at which users can create product records increased by 35% with our technology stack
Our updated Manufacturing Execution (Mx) product is set to be a major release this year.
What I Learned
Over the six months of researching, leading, and contributing to Manufacturing Execution (Mx) product, I gained several key insights:
While there were initial concerns and skepticism about our experience improvements, regular user research provided valuable data that clearly demonstrated our solution was far more intuitive than the legacy product.
When developing a SaaS product for manufacturing organizations, uptime is critical. Every minute of production downtime translates into lost potential revenue and can significantly impact overall efficiency and competitiveness in the market.