Supply chain receiving and reverse logistics

Android native app experience for wholesale warehouses to receive orders from suppliers, verify and account for all the merchandise.

Context: Truckloads of items arrive at our warehouses (Clubs and Distribution Centers). This application would allow the line of associates supporting the receiving tasks, to easily account for the items received. In the background this data would be used by accounting to pay the suppliers for the merchandise received.

Design goal: Provide an easy path for associates to view the purchase orders, by scanning the bar code the driver brings along, document called a BOL (bill of lading). Scan items/boxes to report any discrepancies. Record any aspects that need to be accounted for such as cold chain compliance data.

Prior to this app, the world of receiving was mainly manual, paper based and if any technology was used, it was through old systems set in place decades ago, IBM mainframes aka ‘green screens’. Not only was this a huge digital transformation undertaking from a process standpoint, it also made access to the data mobile accessible for the associates relying on the information to do their job. Service design was a huge aspect of this work in this project. It was done in a very short time span and saved the company millions of dollars in productivity costs.

Outcomes: A fast-paced project that we launched within 12 sprints, working closely in a lean agile development environment, We tested every sprint, initially with prototypes and once we were code ready with the actual apps in-context. This was the teams’ journey through MVP pilot launch. Soon after we rolled out to the entire US market which was 497 Clubs and approximately 1200 users.

UX team composition: I led the design architecture and initial testing. Eventually we resourced and had User Research support and 3 additional designers contribute to the app use cases.