UX/UI for Supply Chain Systems
The supply chain is the sequential flow of processes that guides product movement from its origin toward the customer. Capturing what goes on behind the scenes and determining what your customers experience.
It’s axiomatic that the supply chain industry has undergone tremendous changes over the years. We see both businesses and consumers demanding transparent and seamless order experiences.
To increase efficiency and save costs, companies are implementing automation in warehouses and distribution centers. Leveraging technology to improve supply chain and logistics operations.
Engineers and product teams in the supply chain sector track product movement from sourcing, intake, storage, dispatch, fulfillment, and all the way to the point the consignment comes back from trade as returns.
The “perfect” WMS ensures smooth relations between customers and the business and offers visibility across different functions in the supply chain.
How does UX fit in the larger supply chain software equation?
UX researchers focus on, designing software for specific users, in specific contexts, while taking into consideration specific tasks. We do this by adopting user-centric methodologies that involve the users throughout the development process. If your software is creating frustrations among your labor, this reflects in your employee retention. Building warehouse management systems with the best UX/UI practices allows businesses to reduce training time and cost. This is especially true when there are a lot of temporary workers and the employee turnover is high.
“Perfectly” mapped out processes enable employees to accomplish tasks faster, with fewer errors, and exceed expectations.
The workforce expects better UX
The past few years have seen organizations facing labor shortages hence the need to create a more sustainable workforce and improve the quality of employee experience. We’re seeing a generational change where new workers join the supply chain with expectations. People want to understand the design construct and how a system should work, even before training.
Providing software that is a generation older than the worker creates a disconnect. Outdated systems result in unmotivated employees. Thus affecting the general performance.
How to make everyone happy
It’s humanly impossible!
We’ve got different generations using technology differently. The old generation is often not excited about new tech, and at the other extreme end, we have tech-native workers that expect the latest technology.
The first step when striking a balance is to create an inventory of your users. For instance, we could have super users, front-line workers, and administrative workers. Next, focus on how your users would need to use your software one at a time. At this stage, we’re analyzing the context, main tasks, and goals when performing roles. As we work on workflows and screens, the product team’s main aim is to allow our users to accomplish their tasks naturally while using the systems we’ve designed.
How to determine the right amount of flexibility based on the inventory of users
Strike a balance!
Usually, you’d find common patterns instead of one way of accomplishing tasks. We then consider adding more flexibility, configurability, or personalization features that would help satisfy the patterns you’ve identified. The aim is not always to have ultimate flexibility since this can easily result in complexity. Remember, all applications have an inherent amount of complexity that cannot be hidden or removed. Instead, it must be dealt with, either in user interaction or in product development. Complexity has to be managed and adapted to the type of users. We ask ourselves; who would deal with this complexity? The product or our users. When we shift the complexity to the software, we consider automation and AI to help guide users’ decision-making.
Technology is not a cure for human fallibility
Preventing all human errors in the designing of technological systems is close to impossible. We’re not only involved in specifying, designing, implementing, installing, commissioning, and maintaining systems but operating them as well. As a result, errors are bound to happen and perfect systems do not exist.
Here are some errors experienced in warehouses:
- SKU miss match: A 50 kg bag of sugar intaken as a 500g packet of sugar will be dispatched as the latter. Unless the error is identified and fixed, the business stands the chance of losing money in instances where this error arises. The best systems are those that foresee potential errors and help users recover without consequences. Before and after an intake is closed, validations need to be in place to help prevent users from making avoidable errors.
- Variances: Occasionally during intake, rejected quantities don’t tally with the intake and purchase quantities. Forcing the finance team to assume that the variance is because of a supplier and/or palletization human error where a user mistakenly misses scanning a product label when palletizing. To fix this, before closing an intake, supplier variances need to be captured. The system then automatically populates the human error total to ensure the figures balance from the booking records all the way to purchasing.
- “Wrong” storage: Put-aways to “wrong” locations slow down the dispatch process. Resulting in delays during order fulfillment. There are scenarios of users leaving products in “wrong” locations, thus causing unnecessary under-supplies. Believe me, locating a product stored in a “wrong” location is harder than locating and chasing after a live chicken in the village. Random daily stock-take activities aid in cleaning up the warehouse to ensure that all saleable products are located and picked up during dispatch. Hopefully, the use of IoT when tracking and counting stock will become affordable soon.
- Quarantine: When damages occur during the intake and storage process, the “quarantine module” assists with capturing such records and removing the quarantined products from available saleable stock. This ensures products that reach our customers at each given point are in good condition. Thus reducing the number of returns and dissatisfied customers. The system also helps flag products that have expired or reached their “order by date”. Giving the QA team ample time to locate and dispose of such products. One thing to note is that expired products on a pallet will claim a storage location, and will never be picked up during order picking. Without human intervention, we stand a chance of running out of storage space because of unsaleable products claiming pick phases and reserve locations.
I hope you learned something new today.
Stay tuned for the next article where we’ll look at dispatch and how mapping out order picking ensures products move out of the warehouse “super fast!”
The next time you order from an online store, I hope you’ll appreciate the effort and precision that goes into preparing your order. There’re countless moving parts relying on each other. A slight error can cause an actual explosion on your end, and engineers and product teams in the supply chain work tirelessly to ensure that’s not the case.
Until next time: Keep smiling and never stop creating 😊
If you’d like to say hello, drop me an email at vuyanziglorious@gmail.com or connect via LinkedIn.
Mob love,
Vuyanzi.
