01. Assignment

Digital platform digitizing processes in the company with visualization of outputs and KPIs in dashboards.

The motivation for the digitalization of processes in the company was mainly the need to streamline the work of employees, to capture movements and actions performed on goods in digital form and in one place, to make information easily accessible to all employees in one place and last but not least to obtain the information necessary for managerial decision-making.

The client was faced with the fact that a lot of information was fragmented in different systems and sources, many based on manual spreadsheets, some processes in production were not digitized at all or only partially, departments were getting information from each other late or it was very cumbersome to get it, which led to inefficiently executed activities.

The objectives of the project can be summarized as follows:

• the main objective of the project was to create a Digital Platform for the client as the main entry point and source of information for all employees of the company
• to digitize processes, automate and streamline some of the manual activities
• to streamline communication between departments and increase transparency in the internal processes of the company
• to measure the performance, visualize it and then evaluate the KPIs
• to simplify access to information needed for managerial decision making for the management of the company

02. Solution

During the preparatory phase, together with the client, we attended several analytical workshops and meetings, thanks to which we described and plotted the current state of affairs in detail and began to create a proposal for a future solution, which we are still working on together.

The result was a detailed analysis – functional and technical specification. Its greatest contribution was the process diagrams, which we used to visualize the client’s current processes taking place in production in contrast with the design of the execution of activities in the Digital Platform.

The project and its scope was divided into several priorities and phases, and in 2024 we started the implementation of the functionalities within the first package v1. In production, the client and its staff started using the Digital Platform at the end of 2024 and they still use it daily in their work.

From the specific functionalities of the Digital Platform v1 we select:

• initial landing page with information on the execution of the production plan and revenue plan
• CEO module allowing to set the price of actions/KPIs performed in production
• scanning of goods receipt in the logistics department and custom solution for printing labels via printserver
• digitalization of goods processing in the laptop department
• digitalization of goods processing in the refurbishment and repair department with a direct link to the stock availability of spare parts in the ERP system
• dashboards/departmental dashboards with graphical visualization of individual employees’ and departments’ performances as a whole, statistics of order/goods processing, reports with employees’ performances, documents for payroll, business plan fulfillment, etc.
• integration to the client’s ERP system: data retrieval and data entry
• management of users and roles in Keycloack
• e-mail notifications to users

The realization and technological implementation was coordinated by SCR techlead, while the project is based on modern open-source technologies without any vendor-locking. Among the technologies used we select: PHP, Vue, MySQL, Docker, Redis, RabbitMQ, Thumbor, S3 Storage, Porainer, Keycloack, hosting in DigitalOcean cload provider, Cypress for providing automated tests.

03. Result

Step by step, we have digitized the core processes in production from the goods receiving, logistics department, notebook department to the completion of product refurbishment in the refurbishment and repair department.

The joint efforts of the client and the SCR team succeeded in eliminating a lot of unnecessary work, streamlining cumbersome processes and make the necessary information available to both the company management and all employees. We have replaced the excel spreadsheets that were previously used, the complicated printing of labels, the manual copying of values into the ERP system, the sharing of excel sheets between departments, the hand-written paperwork taped over products, the not knowing what laptop is refurbishable and whether spare parts are available for it, not knowing how the company is doing in terms of sales, production, etc. In addition, we have provided quickly accessible and transparent information in one place, which the client uses for capacity planning, to reward their employees based on performance, which brings an increase in employee motivation, an increase in labor productivity and the capacity of the production itself.

Development is currently continuing with the implementation of additional functionality, involving other client departments in DP within the defined project scopes for v2.