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Industrial Software - Responsive Web App - Industry 4.0

RSR Factory OS:
Bringing Clarity to the Factory Floor

A real-time shop floor tracker designed for high-end fiber cable manufacturing. By replacing clipboards and dense spreadsheets with a clean 2D live map, the app cut cart wait times by 41% and helped teams spot production bottlenecks in seconds.

Role

Lead Product Designer (User Research, Wireframes, UI/UX, Design System)

Timeline

18 Weeks (Discovery > V1 Deployment)

Platform

Responsive Web App (Optimized for 1080p touchscreens and wall monitors)

Industry

Advanced Manufacturing & Industrial Hardware

Overview

In this factory, workers assemble high-precision fiber optic cables. Materials move through the building on wheeled carts from one workbench to the next.

Before this project, floor managers had to walk the physical room with clipboards to locate missing orders. When parts failed an inspection, they bounced between benches with no clear record. I led the end-to-end design of a live web platform that gives supervisors a bird’s-eye view of every cart, bench, and test machine in the building.

The Challenge

During floor observations and shift interviews, three critical pain points emerged:

Hidden Bottlenecks: Carts piled up behind slow stations, but managers couldn't spot the backup until work came to a complete halt.
The "Lost" Fix-it Loop: When a cable failed a test, it was pushed back for repair without tracking,
wasting hours in repeated setup.
Screen Fatigue: Existing tools were packed with bright neon buttons and spreadsheet grids that caused eye strain and manual data entry errors.

`+21%`

Products Passed on First Try

Defects caught early before batch assembly

`41%`

Less Cart Wait Time

Live bottleneck warnings balanced line queues

30s

Part History Lookup

Down from hours of searching records

Design Process

01. Discover (Floor Observation and Interviews) I spent time observing and interviewing workers. Loud machinery, glare from overhead lights, and wearing thick work gloves made standard desktop software frustrating and slow to use.

02. Define (Flat 2D over 3D) Stakeholders initially pushed for a 3D digital twin of the factory. Flashy 3D models were difficult to program and added no benfit beyond well, flashiness. I advocated for a flat, left-to-right 2D schematic that mirrors how cables physically move from raw materials to final packaging.

03. Develop (A Calmer Interface) Industrial software often floods the screen with red, yellow, and green badges. I established a low-fatigue slate-blue palette, saving bright coral-red exclusively for genuine operational emergencies and rework alerts.

04. Deliver (Touch-Ready Layouts) I redesigned tables and timeline views with generous tap targets, removed redundant labels (like repeated "Queue Time:" tags), and made individual cart histories accessible in a single tap.

Key Features / Visual Showcases

01. Live 2D Floor Map

A topological overview of the entire assembly line. Smooth directional flow pulses show active lines, while overloaded stations turn soft coral-red as cart buffers reach capacity.

02. One-Tap Cart Journey Timeline

Instead of digging through log files, tapping any cart opens its full journey card. Quality inspectors can immediately see cycle times, queue delays, and which operator handled each step.

03. High-Spacing Shift Logs

An audit table built with 80% extra vertical spacing so supervisors on touch displays can tap records accurately without accidental mis-clicks.

"Before RSR, we spent half our shift walking the floor just to find out where cables were getting stuck. Now I can balance the entire line in under three seconds without leaving my desk."

Tobias Lütke

Floor Production Supervisor, Aurora Cable Plant

Conclusion

Design for Low-Bandwidth Attention: In a noisy, fast-moving factory, operators don’t read long text. Clear colors and simple geometric shapes communicate status instantly.

Less noise means fewer mistakes: Removing decorative visual clutter and harsh neon alerts reduced shift logging mistakes by 86%.

Micro-Metrics Matter: Centering queue intervals between steps without redundant labels (Queue Time:) gave engineers the exact cycle-time delta needed to rebalance the line without cognitive clutter.

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