Context

Imagine a large manufacturing company that faces the same challenge day after day: equipment maintenance. Every time a machine breaks down, production stops, causing delays in the delivery of parts and significant losses. And the worst part? Many of these interruptions could have been avoided with better organization and planning. Managers struggle to keep up with maintenance schedules while machines continue to operate without proper monitoring.

Challenge

Develop a system that utilizes equipment registration data and maintenance frequency to gradually predict and indicate the next required maintenance. This approach would minimize the waste of labor, time, and materials in asset maintenance. By leveraging data-driven insights, the system would enable companies to keep their equipment running more efficiently, leading to reduced costs and increased productivity.

My role

As a UX/UI Designer, I collaborated with the PO, a requirements analyst, a maintenance specialist, and the development team to create a solution that manages maintenance and generates data to identify where waste is occurring.

Goal

It was expected that implementing the system would make production more efficient, reducing maintenance costs by up to 20-30% while keeping machines running smoothly. This cost reduction could be seen within 6 to 12 months after adopting the system, as preventive maintenance starts to replace reactive repairs.

Problem

Impact

The lack of an effective system causes several issues: reactive maintenance, high costs, and most importantly, the inability to predict failures before they occur. All of this directly impacts the workflow, creating a domino effect that jeopardizes deadlines and customer satisfaction.

Discovery

• What types of maintenance are there and when do they happen?

• How is maintenance planning done in the company?

• Who is responsible for planning maintenance?

• What happens to production when a machine stops unexpectedly?

• How is the process of sending a machine for maintenance managed?

Note: The text in the images is in Portuguese, reflecting the language used during the project. Some data has been blurred to maintain confidentiality.

We explored two different industries, aerospace and sugar-energy, to understand their maintenance processes and problems. This was a new area for me, and I aimed to answer several key questions:

Findings

Our research produced valuable insights into maintenance processes. We have developed several key visual tools to illustrate these findings These tools provide a clear overview of maintenance strategies, the roles of different stakeholders, and the workflow associated with each maintenance type.

Types of Maintenance

Personas

User journey - Process

Note: The text in the images is in Portuguese, reflecting the language used during the project.

• Respond to maintenance requests

• Open maintenance requests

• Start and close service calls

• Request tool

• Request parts purchases

• Request external services for equipment

Frustrations

• Having to use paper forms to fill out maintenance requests

• Not having easy access to inventory to check if a part is available for maintenance

• Sudden changes in planning

• Work overload in case of emergencies and urgencies

Goals

Paulo, 35 to 45 years old, Maintenance Technician

Carlos, 30 to 40 years old, Planner

Needs

• View open orders

• Track the progress of orders by type and period

• Plan preventive maintenance

• Plan predictive maintenance

• Set dates for maintenance completion

• Define order priorities

• Coordinate different teams

Frustrations

• Having to retrieve a lot of data from SAP to create metrics

• Having to undertake training in SAP as it is a complex tool

• Unplanned interruptions

• Lack of communication between teams

• Incomplete or inaccurate data filled out by the technician

• Uncontrolled equipment downtime

• Lack of history of maintenance details

To assist in outlining the steps a planner takes for each type of maintenance, we created detailed flow diagrams. These diagrams visually map out the entire process for different maintenance types, guiding the planner through each step from start to finish. They provide a clear, structured view of the tasks involved, ensuring that every aspect of the maintenance process is covered efficiently.

To better understand the needs and daily challenges, I created a profile of the two main personas in this process: the maintenance technician, who performs equipment maintenance, and the planner, who schedules when each piece of equipment needs to stop for maintenance or decides what to do when a machine unexpectedly breaks down.

• Quick access to equipment information

• Tools and parts available

• Clear communication with the planner

• Ongoing training to learn best practices and maintenance procedures

Needs

Goals

• Efficient and easy-to-use planning tools

• Failure prediction

• History of maintenance frequency, causes, defects, and solutions

• Budget management

Solution

As a basic characteristic of the solution, I used a simple and clear interface, following the visual identity already established in other company products. The goal in developing the interfaces was to make them easy and intuitive, overcoming the complexity that SAP typically presented in this type of solution.

Below are some screens of the solution, which offered two different views (Planner and Technician) and included more than 50 screens across modules and variations.

Problem: Having to undertake training for using a complex tool

To create a new maintenance request, the Planner could access it either via a button on the home page or through the menu.

When selecting equipment for maintenance, all historical data would automatically be linked to the new request.

Problem: Lack of history of maintenance details, Not having easy access to inventory to check if a part is available for maintenance

To register a piece of equipment, the Planner or responsible person could choose to include or skip the step of associating defects, causes, and solutions, as well as the tools used for its maintenance. However, equipment missing this information would be marked in the list and appear as indicators on the home page.

Need: History of maintenance frequency, causes, defects, and solutions
Problem: Having to undertake training for using a complex tool

The Planner also had the option to create a maintenance plan, activate it, and monitor its progress.

Need: Quick access to equipment information
Problem: Having to use paper forms to fill out maintenance requests, Not having easy access to inventory to check if a part is available for maintenance

As for the maintenance technician, who often kept records on paper or a computer in the maintenance area, they now had a system that worked on an iPad. This allowed them to easily view all the request details, resolution history, and a screen displaying different maintenance tasks, ordered by priority and type (using colors and icons). They could also start and finish tasks to log work time, add notes, and mark any pending issues, if needed.

Validation

We went through some stages of validation and usability testing. The tests were conducted in person and guided.
The main points we identified in these validations were:

• Terminology that needed to be adjusted to the context;

• Flows that needed to be refined for exception cases (e.g., work time);

• The need to view images in greater detail;

• Necessary information in the registers that wasn’t mapped at the beginning of the project;

• Component order adjustments with frequent use of the TAB key in companies.

Learnings

• The experience highlighted the importance of considering the limited time of end users when planning usability tests. This is especially crucial in corporate environments, where professionals have very tight schedules and limited availability to participate in testing.

• We observed that the planning process is similar across companies from different sectors, but we identified important specificities that vary between them. Therefore, we need to create a system that is not customized for each client but is flexible and efficient enough to meet the planning needs of different sectors.

• Competing with a robust and stable tool is a significant challenge. Therefore, it is essential to thoroughly understand the competitors' differentiators and how we can add unique value, especially by addressing aspects that are not well handled by competitors. This understanding should be gained before starting the product development, and it's important to validate with customers whether these additions truly make sense in their context.

• This product was created for the B2B market, so aligning how its impact will be measured beforehand is extremely important. The results take time to be seen, not only due to the B2B context but also because of the maintenance process, and I was no longer with the company by the time the final results came in.