Hello World
OVERVIEW
Accelerating time-to-closure for industrial maintenance with Honeywell Forge Performace+
TEAM
Eric Brier
Damneet Gharu
Agniraj Chatterji
Kinshuk Bose
Pratyaksha Binod Kumar
Gracelyn Miller
David Braylark
Lauren Duxbury
Lauren Lindeen
John Fouts
Extended Team:
30+ Developers
2 Product Managers
Conceptualization
Design
Usability testing
Dev handoff
But wait, what is Honeywell Forge?
Honeywell wanted to modernize it’s product offerings - Asset sentinel, IR and IRIS and bring them under a single umbrella called Forge APM (Asset Performance Management).
Forge is a cloud-based SaaS suite designed for industrial sites and warehouses, it provides end-to-end insights into assets, operations, and workforce.
Impact
Helped close the loop and deliver a reimagined 0-1 experience
47%
Faster turn around time for events to work orders and closure.
78%
Higher Click Through Rate (CTR) on the asset widget and right drawer
12
MVP accepted by 12 early adopters, and launch of the Honeywell Worker Assist App
Understanding the space
Discovery workshops & sprints
During the discovery phase, we mapped out the user journey across three distinct phases for our two primary user groups, the Maintenance Managers (MM) and Maintenance Engineers (ME):
Before Shift: Available on standby.
During Office Hours: Site control room oversight or executing work orders in the field.
After Shift: Debriefing, generating reports, and handing over to the next shift team.
The problem
The silo'ed experience and lack of scalability
Design phase
Themes and opportunities
My approach at solving tackling the problems can be broadly catagorised into 3 broad thematic approaches
Actionable insights
Accelerating results
On-the-go data
Theme 1
Actionable insights
What are actionable insights?
Quick data bite with minimum navigation
Proactive critical insight delivery
Step 1
The Maintenance Manager’s has to evaluate the functioning and overall health of the site
Step 2
They have to identify fault patterns and assets which need urgent attention.
Actionable insights
When reviewing the site, the maintenance manager wants a quick view of plant health (OEE) and key KPIs, so they don’t have to navigate through multiple assets.
When monitoring performance,the maintenance managers want to spot faults and recurring failures proactively,so they can address issues before they escalate.
When taking action,they want to use tools like interactive heat maps to filter and locate critical issues,so they can act quickly and accurately.
Actionable insights
Considering feedback from the first, I iterated option 2 with the following improvements:
Abbreviated - Converted the OEE widget into a scorecard widget which only gives the present day’s data.
Increased discoverability - Refined the interaction pattern by which the heat map would filter both the asset summary and events, to allow users to quickly identify what they need to see.
Actionable insights
Considering all the feedback I got from the SMEs, stakeholders and users, the final production iteration was a amalgamation of user requested features and UX optimisation:
Theme 2
Accelerating results
How to accelerate results?
Supply of contextual information to empower decisions.
Faster turnaround from identification to closure
Closed loop - Reflect actions and corrections into real time insights
Step 3
Step 4
Based on their finding, they raise a work order to fix the issue
Step 5
The Maintenance Managers would coordinate with engineers in the field to oversee maintenance.
Accelerating insights
Accelerating insights
Considering the feedback, my idea was to show the merit of having a WebGL based 3d model instead of multiple truncated views.
I went out of my comfort zone and the tried my hand at creating a 3D model and mocked it up to the asset screen using Aftereffects.
The concept pitch was a real ‘Aha!’ moment among both users and business stakeholders.
This led to the engineering push to adopt OpenGL and implement it on the product.
Entire walkthrough of asset details page, and subsequent work-order creation
Theme 3
On-the-go data
What is On-the-go data ?
Deliver insights wherever they are
Reduce manual data entry
Provide in-location documentation help
MM offsite
Will only receive a call or alert off hours incase of any critical event. Cannot look into any data/KPI or create work orders
ME onsite
Does not have access to live data of assets on the field.
ME reporting
Has to juggle between multiple systems to record observations back into the system.
Accelerating insights
Expanding scope from the business ask, there was a lot of intervention required in terms of creating an experience for a mobile breakpoint.
I created a zero to one design initiative called APM mobile, which would help close the loop. I played a direct role in pushing for the concept and bringing it into scope along with the help of UX leader John Fouts.
Accelerating insights
In collaboration with the Worker Assist and Inspection rounds team, a lot of my feature suggestions such as work order review, commenting and asset details functionality was integrated as part of the Forge Worker asset app that was launched in 2022.
Conclusion
Stretch goals and takeaways
Apart from just the core design of the Forge APM experience, I helped towards expanding the Forge Design system to help build consistency across future Forge applications and across the pipeline.
This project was jam-packed with a lot of work, technical domain understanding, exploration and discussion with stakeholders. It feels almost impossible to boil down my learning, but if I had to, here they are: