From Design to Operations: 5 steps that lead to better logistics service
What do we know about good logistics? It allows handling goods arrival, sorting and departure. Management System and Statistics are essential for classifying the payload according to destinations, planning the delivery, and analysing the data. Designing Logistic lifecycle isn’t just about goods delivery, but customers joy at the finish. Let’s take a closer look on this path.
The capacity of businesses, shippers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses depends on delivery preparation and numerous logistics operations. Nowadays, automation of management systems helps companies to achieve better services, reduce paperwork, automate their operations, cover unpredictable factors and increase effectiveness. Let’s take a close look at logistic processes lifecycle and decide how human-centred design can help this domain.
Logistics is a significant market that operates through many of the activities involved in the Design To Operate lifecycle product lifecycle. At the same time, data from these phases can act as significant inputs for consideration by logistics teams. With integrated D2O processes in place, your logistics team can improve performance and ensure that goods are delivered on time at the lowest cost possible — ultimately helping you provide the kinds of experiences customers expect.
But simplifying things for customers can be tricky — especially when critical phases of the product lifecycle are isolated and separated. To address this challenge, companies try to integrate the end-to-end digital supply chain across the steps of the D2O product lifecycle: design, planning, manufacturing, delivery, and operation.
Design: Vital decisions made in the design phase can impact all other aspects of the product lifecycle. During product development, small details influence how the final product will be delivered. In any case, design and logistics teams need to coordinate and share information to make the right decisions.
Planning: This phase needs signals from consumers. With integration into the design, planners can efficiently communicate spikes and troughs in demand with insight. As the concluding design plans crystallise, the design team will turn to the planning team to ensure that the best materials are available. If not, the design team needs to make modifications that, in turn, will impact requirements, sourcing, inventory levels, purchase orders, and more.
Manufacturing: Design choices impact manufacturability. Thus, design and production need consistent communication to determine the feasibility of meeting expectations. Based on decisions made, the manufacturing team needs to set up its lines and prepare for any configuration variabilities. Manufacturing will also want to report back to design on any design flaws that impede the production process.
Delivery: Failure to deliver on time can overthrow an otherwise pleasant customer experience — which is why fine-tuned logistics is essential in meeting customer expectations. Say the final product is a large piece of capital equipment. Is it designed to be delivered in parts and assembled on-site? Does the final product require preservation or some other environmental demands? Considerations like these should be communicated to logistics partners from the earliest stages, making collaboration with design teams crucial.
Operations: How a product misbehaves once it’s with the customer can provide essential details back to design about how customers use the product and how it holds up under certain conditions. If the product is designed with sensors that convey data on product status and health, design teams can make product improvements. How often are certain parts breaking down? Is the product designed with tolerances relevant for actual usage? Answers to such questions can help design teams better meet customer expectations and deliver better experiences.
Selecto UX team always takes a design-thinking approach with user in the center. Hence we start work with a discovery to design logistic applications, we conduct in-depth research before. The product owner validation and feedback enabled us to work through complicated processes and implement them as convenient features.
Based on the user roles and flows, the design team creates the wireframes of the main pages and interactive prototypes. As soon as the client had approved the wireframes, we designed UI mockups for MVP version.
We provide Management Systems that simplify handling complicated and data-heavy processes of goods delivery planning, distribution, departure and statistics.
