Printshop Improvements
Built software for the largest OSHA card printshop in the nation — designed and implemented application changes to improve process efficiency and quality assurance
Project Context
- The company signed contracts to print and ship cards for two new vendors and needed to scale up printshop capabilities. This necessitated:
- More efficient tools for processing expedited orders
- A less cumbersome card-packaging process
- After a handful of embarrassing mistakes, there was an urgent need to reduce opportunity for error
- Make sure the right cards went in the right packages
- Eliminate manual entry for shipping and return addresses
- Also wanted to reduce headaches and frustration for the printshop techs
PRODUCT
Software used by our OSHA card printshop to print, package, and ship OSHA cards from three different national vendors
DATE
April 2020 - July 2020
ROLE
Product Designer, Business Analyst
TEAM
Evan BlevinsSenior Developer
Matt HendersonProduct Owner
Perla MirandaDeveloper
Process
- Met with printshop users to understand their process and identify areas for improvement
- Documented the existing workflow
- Met with the Product Owner, the Director of Support Services, and the Director of Product Development to define requirements
- Researched vendors for purchasing postage and presented my recommendations
- Documented revised workflows for the printing, packaging, and shipping processes
- Created mock-ups for the new features
- Led reviews/beta testing of our revised solutions with the printshop users and Director of Support Services to gather feedback and further refine their tools
Impact
- Introduced rate shopping across carriers for all tracked orders and automated the process of purchasing postage
- Reduced shipping costs
- Eliminated the possibility that an address could be mis-typed by one of our techs
- Reduced the number of manual steps in the packaging/shipping process from 10-20 per package to only 2 steps
- Implemented a card scanning process that:
- Sped up the process of packaging cards
- Ensured that every card was accounted for
- Added logging and error checking for every card
- Reduced packaging errors
- Reduced frustration and wasted time for the printshop users
