Revolutionizing Warehouse Management: Bitlog's Digital Solution
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application
- Functional Applications - Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)
Applicable Industries
- Transportation
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Picking, Sorting & Positioning
- Warehouse Automation
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Bitlog is a Sweden-based company that offers innovative software solutions in the supply and logistics market. Their main product is a digital warehouse management system that allows companies to eliminate paperwork, automate their operations, and increase productivity. Bitlog has been offering technological solutions in logistics and warehouse management for over 10 years. They sought a team that could extend their engineering expertise and develop functional iOS applications for their main product. In June 2015, they partnered with N-iX, a software development company, to maintain their warehouse management app for iPad, redesign the existing app, add new features, and unite several applications into one solution to make the platform multisided.
The Challenge
Bitlog, a Sweden-based company specializing in supply and logistics software solutions, was in need of a reliable software development partner to design and develop a state-of-the-art warehouse automation system. The goal was to create a user-friendly iOS application with extensive functionality. A crucial aspect of the project was UX design, which was required to ensure the smooth operation of the product. The challenges faced by the UX specialists at N-iX, the software development partner, included structuring the requirements and breaking down all the processes into user flows according to specific roles, and creating an intuitive UX to ensure smooth operation of warehouses. The efficiency of a typical warehouse depends on delivery planning and numerous logistics operations, which include dozens of coordinated activities performed by different employees. Warehouse automation systems need to include all these operations and also account for unforeseeable circumstances.
The Solution
The N-iX team worked closely with the product owner on the client’s side to communicate the project requirements. They analyzed and developed multiple roles for the Warehouse Management System (WMS) and Transport Management System (TMS), each designed for two user roles: one for managers, another for warehouse workers or drivers. The UX designers divided all working processes of a typical warehouse into numerous user flows, then developed user roles and scenarios for each user participating in a corresponding process. Based on these roles and flows, the designers created wireframes of the main pages and interactive prototypes. After client approval, UI mockups were designed. The team used Lean UX to design Bitlog applications, constantly repeating the “think-make-check” cycle. The product owner validation and feedback enabled the team to work through complicated processes and realize them in the app features.
Operational Impact
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Airport SCADA Systems Improve Service Levels
Modern airports are one of the busiest environments on Earth and rely on process automation equipment to ensure service operators achieve their KPIs. Increasingly airport SCADA systems are being used to control all aspects of the operation and associated facilities. This is because unplanned system downtime can cost dearly, both in terms of reduced revenues and the associated loss of customer satisfaction due to inevitable travel inconvenience and disruption.
Case Study
IoT-based Fleet Intelligence Innovation
Speed to market is precious for DRVR, a rapidly growing start-up company. With a business model dependent on reliable mobile data, managers were spending their lives trying to negotiate data roaming deals with mobile network operators in different countries. And, even then, service quality was a constant concern.
Case Study
Digitize Railway with Deutsche Bahn
To reduce maintenance costs and delay-causing failures for Deutsche Bahn. They need manual measurements by a position measurement system based on custom-made MEMS sensor clusters, which allow autonomous and continuous monitoring with wireless data transmission and long battery. They were looking for data pre-processing solution in the sensor and machine learning algorithms in the cloud so as to detect critical wear.
Case Study
Cold Chain Transportation and Refrigerated Fleet Management System
1) Create a digital connected transportation solution to retrofit cold chain trailers with real-time tracking and controls. 2) Prevent multi-million dollar losses due to theft or spoilage. 3) Deliver a digital chain-of-custody solution for door to door load monitoring and security. 4) Provide a trusted multi-fleet solution in a single application with granular data and access controls.
Case Study
Vehicle Fleet Analytics
Organizations frequently implement a maintenance strategy for their fleets of vehicles using a combination of time and usage based maintenance schedules. While effective as a whole, time and usage based schedules do not take into account driving patterns, environmental factors, and sensors currently deployed within the vehicle measuring crank voltage, ignition voltage, and acceleration, all of which have a significant influence on the overall health of the vehicle.In a typical fleet, a large percentage of road calls are related to electrical failure, with battery failure being a common cause. Battery failures result in unmet service agreement levels and costly re-adjustment of scheduled to provide replacement vehicles. To reduce the impact of unplanned maintenance, the transportation logistics company was interested in a trial of C3 Vehicle Fleet Analytics.
Case Study
3M Gains Real-Time Insight with Cloud Solution
The company has a long track record of innovative technology solutions. For example, 3M helps its customers optimize parking operations by automating fee collection and other processes. To improve support for this rapidly expanding segment, 3M needed to automate its own data collection and reporting. The company had recently purchased the assets of parking, tolling, and automatic license plate reader businesses, and required better insight into these acquisitions. Chad Reed, Global Business Manager for 3M Parking Systems, says, “With thousands of installations across the world, we couldn’t keep track of our software and hardware deployments, which made it difficult to understand our market penetration.” 3M wanted a tracking application that sales staff could use to get real-time information about the type and location of 3M products in parking lots and garages. So that it could be used on-site with potential customers, the solution would have to provide access to data anytime, anywhere, and from an array of mobile devices. Jason Fox, Mobile Application Architect at 3M, upped the ante by volunteering to deliver the new app in one weekend. For Fox and his team, these requirements meant turning to the cloud instead of an on-premises datacenter. “My first thought was to go directly to the cloud because we needed to provide access not only to our salespeople, but to resellers who didn’t have access to our internal network,” says Fox. “The cloud just seemed like a logical choice.”