The Problem

Station allocation across multiple production lines is a highly variable and time consuming process. Factors such as daily production requirements, attendance, labour agreements, demand for critical skills, and contingencies require regular communication between line supervisors, contractors, and labourers.

No dedicated communication channel: The communication is carried out through multiple channels such as phone calls and messaging.
Tasks issued by multiple line supervisors are not documented and are handled on the fly. This causes overlapping requirements and inefficient prioritisation.
A comprehensive mechanism for monitoring violation of labour contract requirements (such as minimum/maximum working hours) must be created.

Change in shift in a snapshot

A Solution

An app that streamlines communication
between supervisors and contractors
and leverages attendance database to assist in decision-making.

**Task Management**

- Streamlined format of communication
- Tasks ordered by criticality
- Quick previews

**Line Monitoring**

- Line-wise status updates and requirements
- Notes Supervisor’s preferences
- Automated recommendations per station

**Attendance Monitoring**

- Keeping overtime in check
- Making attendance surplus/deficit actionable
- Tap to contact

Process

Day 1 | Interviews and BRAINSTORMING WITH CLIENT

3 types of interactions:

Supervisor to Contractor - for delegating allotment & stating preferences
Contractor-Operator - for allocation
Contractor-Supervisor - for updates

Time cost in communication due to:

Miscommunication/misinterpretations due to multiple channels of communication (phone-calls, WhatsApp, SMS)
overlapping requirements
manual prioritisation of allocation tasks
no regulation of overtime per allocation - leads to violations

How the communication is currently optimised:

Acronyms used (Skilled Operator = SO - helps chunking information - but often mistyped/misspelled and requires confirmation)
Supervisors use a dashboard to plan - daily production goals translate into allocation of operators by skill, and hours.
A directory of operators exists classifying skills as Skilled/Semi-skilled/Training

Opportunities:

Common platform to establish correspondence between all supervisors and contractors in real-time
Automated recommendations: Leverage daily attendance records - that includes shift attendance and a survey of availability for the following shift/day
Monitoring working hours: Need to record and monitor working hours to avoid overtime

DAY 2 | BRAINSTORMING

DAY 3-4 | PROTOTYPING

Low-fidelity prototypes

DAY 5 | FEEDBACK SESSION

Emphasis on making iterations actionable and intuitive
Chunking of information needs to adopt skill-level
Information to be laid out in the order of spoken language to ensure objectivity
Station-specific alerts
Plugging central database for generating preferences - criteria - Availability, skill, working hours

Card Layout Iterations