AHONA BANERJEE
Factory Dashboard for Shop Floor Operator
INDUSTRY 4.0
HCI
2022
Translated complex factory data into an accessible and informative dashboard interface, enhancing shop floor operators' ability to promptly monitor production processes and identify inefficiencies.
Introduction
The manufacturing industry is going through a digital transformation. It focuses on acquiring and exchanging data for improved efficiency in areas such as automation, analysis, and maintenance, enabling preventive maintenance to avoid unplanned downtime on devices.
The number of automated machines is growing rapidly, and they have replaced people in some repetitive, risky tasks or tasks that require absolute consistency of results over time. However, alongside each of these automated machines, there are on the shop floor to monitor their operation and ensure that the machine is acting in accordance with business requirements.
Problems
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Machine faults are typically identified during routine inspections, but there currently needs to be a means of promptly detecting performance issues as they occur.
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A platform to view machine KPIs is not available to the machine operator.
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Due to a lack of information, shop floor operators are unable to respond promptly in the event of a breakdown.
Solution
We integrated the IoT platform with CNC, Ingestion Molding, Stamping, Forging, Welding, and Robotics machines of leading equipment manufacturers and presented key insights on a TV Dashboard for Factory workers.
Design Process
Getting Started
The first thing I did was lay out my plan for how I would go about the whole process. I laid out a few questions before I began working on it-
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What is this Dashboard all about?
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Who are we designing this for? What are various User Personas?
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What would each user persona like to see on this TV Dashboard?
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We read the documents shared by the Client and, after understanding the above aspects, found a few challenges.
Design Challenges
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Visual representation of massive Complex data on just one screen while avoiding information overload.
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Different information matters to each persona, and it was challenging to find a common, effective Visualization of KPIs on a single TV screen.
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Designing a crisp report that Compares KPIs of machines for Admin persona.
User Persona
User Journey
Kanban Board
Wireframes
Focus Area
Accessibility
According to the W3C, the contrast ratio between text and its background should be at least 4.5 to 1 (conformance level AA.) The ratios become more forgiving with larger and heavier fonts since they’re easier to read at lower contrast. If your type is at least 18 pt or 14 pt bold, the minimum contrast ratio drops to 3 to 1
Factory TV Dashboard
Launch & Nurture
Once the dashboard was designed and effectively displayed KPIs on TV screens installed in factories, we tracked what impact it had on overall factory performance to achieve the following result.
User Feedback from various user segments (Sent Feedback forms): Analytics of factory performance
