Product Design
Staples US internal B2B software
Flightdeck is an enterprise software that powers Staples’ more than 9 million print orders per year. It receives print orders from online and in-store interfaces and sends them to the best facility to produce, fulfill and ship based on calculations that yield the best use of material, labor and shipping effort.
When a job comes into the Flightdeck network today, there are typically 5 activities that can occur:
Currently, the Incoming Job Panel only offers two options: Accept and Decline. FlightDeck doesn't permit users to reroute or hold jobs before accepting them. This creates confusion in the production process because accepting a job triggers alerts throughout production. Rerouting a job by first accepting it creates false alerts.
Additionally, rerouted jobs must be reassessed at the new facility, leading to wasted time.
The goal is to find a way to allow all users to perform all common activities for routed job in a more efficient way. Also make sure the rerouted jobs are automatically accepted at the new DPF location.
I conducted user interviews with printing facility associates and managers. It was found that associates assigned to manual re-routing tasks have low job satisfaction. Furthermore, managers face difficulties filling these shifts because the role doesn't offer opportunities for career advancement. Additionally, facility leads expressed a desire to understand the reasons behind each job's rerouting or hold status. This knowledge would enable them to better allocate resources and fulfill orders more efficiently.
$164,000 labor dollars are used to route and re-route jobs per year. 11% of jobs that are routed to the network are put on hold.
Manual re-routes = 50,935 activities per year
Holds = 41,172 activities per year
Users now have the ability to accept a job and promptly place it on hold, while also providing the reason for the hold.
Users now can delete a job while also providing the reason for the deletion.
Users now can re-route a job and promptly place it on hold, while also providing the reason for both the re-route and the hold.
To enhance usability, I incorporated notifications to provide users with visual and auditory feedback for their actions.
The solution I provided was met with great satisfaction from everyone involved. The new Job Panel successfully reduced false job acceptances by over 90%, eliminating $164,000 in annual labor costs associated with manual rerouting tasks. Re-routed jobs are automatically accepted at the new facility saving more time and cost. Print facility staff are relieved from the burden of performing tedious manual work due to software limitations. Furthermore, production leaders now have access to valuable data on deleted and rerouted jobs, which will greatly enhance overall efficiency.
