Crowns IPS Safety – Swapnil Chandra

CROWN’S IPS SAFETY!

IOT in Warehouses to provide safety and better management

My Role - Lead UX Design

Challenge:

Create a Product, Service or bot

That includes some kind of hardware element
That can live on the InfoLink platform
That has some type of application control or analysis
That is either Crown made/owned, or Outside entity provider/partner

- Mike Gallagher,
Crown Equipment

Solution:

IPS Safety is a mix of Telematics and Indoor Positioning System which increases the safety and provides better fleet management - all by integrating the element of IOT with InfoLink.

Result:

Flow of the IPS Safety Design.

WHAT’S THE CHALLENGE?

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?

We were challenged to come up with a concept design to enhance InfoLink’s features and benefit the Forklift operators as well as the Warehouse managers for Crown Equipment. Crown’s InfoLink is a flagship in fleet management and data analysis.

Crown’s InfoLink is a flagship in fleet management and data analysis. We were challenged to come up with a concept design to enhance InfoLink’s features and benefit the Forklift operators as well as the Warehouse managers.

WHO ARE WE HELPING?

Crown Equipment gave us our target audience as Forklift operators and Warehouse Managers. Based on that we created fun personas to work with - Jack and John! Their requirements were simple:

Safety for Jack
Management for John
Automation for both

OUR MARKET RESEARCH

Crown Equipment has many competitors and to give them an edge we wanted to understand their what their competitors were already offering.  
We realized that all companies are:

Tracking the forklifts and
Providing multiple options to automate a few elements of the forklift operations
ARI Fleet Management : Lease Scheduling
Rastrac Management : GPS Tracking Solutions
Doering Fleet Management : Vehicle Fleet Management
Merchant Fleet Management : Open to any Vehicle Brand & lease management.
Fleet Maintenance Texas : Emergency OnSite repair features.

tracking the forklifts and
Providing multiple options to automate a few elements of the forklift operations
ARI Fleet Management : Lease Scheduling
Rastrac Management : GPS Tracking Solutions
Doering Fleet Management : Vehicle Fleet Management
Merchant Fleet Management : Open to any Vehicle Brand & lease management.
Fleet Maintenance Texas : Emergency OnSite repair features.

CROWN RESEARCH

We then dug into what Crown Equipment offers and how their business works so that our solution meets their business needs as well as design needs. We realized that they pride themselves on having very minimal Key Partners. Also, although they are a primarily hardware (forklift) focused company they do like to work in software (InfoLink).

BRAINSTORMING IS FUN

We began thinking of different ideas to solve the problem

Maybe using drones for automation and better space management
Maybe a smart headset to assist an operator during the day
Or a telematic solution to improve Safety using automation and get accurate data analysis

WHAT’S OUR FINAL SOLUTION?

We picked IPS Safety to be our solution. It would be a new device that would compose of:

Indoor positioning system with an accuracy of location to an inch
Telematics to control speed of forklifts
Advanced Data analysis features
Capabilities to connect to InfoLink and work with it’s platform

We picked IPS Safety to be our solution. It would be a new device that would compose of:

The InfoLink cloud platform will be connected to the John (Manager’s) dashboard as well as Crown’s IPS Safety. Crown’s IPS Safety would be attached to the Crown Forklift and will assist Jack (Operator) as well as report data back to John. Our primary 3 focuses were on:

Speed control of the forklift
Real-time maintainence of the forklifts
Real-time location tracking of the forklift

The InfoLink cloud platform will be connected to the John (Manager’s) dashboard as well as Crown’s IPS Safety. Crown’s IPS Safety would be attached to the Crown Forklift and will assist Jack (Operator) as well as report data back to John. Our primary 3 focuses were on:

HOW WOULD IT WORK?

SPEED CONTROL FEATURE
To understand this feature let’s consider a scenario - Jack is super bored and day dreaming while operating the forklift and Jason is texting someone. Neither are paying attention and neither can see each other due to the aisles.  With today’s existing solutions they would meet with an accident unless manually prevented. However, with IPS Safety, the IPS system would calculate the speed of the forklifts and can predict whether the forklifts would collide. If yes, it would reduce the speeds of the forklifts using telematics and send a report of this situation to John (manager).

REAL-TIME MAINTAINENCE FEATURE
This feature would provide a real time check of the condition of the forklift(currently done by InfoLink) before using it as well as while in use using telematics. If there is a problem, the accurate location would be sent to Jeff(maintainence) and a report of this situation to John(manager).

REAL-TIME LOCATION TRACKING FEATURE
As mentioned above, the IPS would provide accurate real-time tracking of forklifts. This would not only provide the us their locations but enough data to:

Analyze their movements during the day
Avoid a forklift theft
Future scope: provide sychronization between forklifts so that operators can sychronize their tasks to enhance their efficiency

DOES OUR SOLUTION SOLVE THE PROBLEM?

The Challenge
Create a Product, Service or both

That includes some kind of hardware element
That can live on the InfoLink platform
That has some type of application control or analysis
That is either Crown made/owned, or Outside entity provider/partner

Problem Space and IPS Safety
Create a Product, Service or both

That includes some kind of hardware element - Small portable connected device.
That can live on the InfoLink platform - Will use InfoLink Cloud, Dashboard and Interface for alerts and notifications.
That has some type of application control or analysis - Analyses datafor predictability and Accident Prevention.
That is either Crown made/owned, or Outside entity provider/partner - Crown owned.

Company Goal would be to drive players to the platform

For end user, or dealer channel benefit
Enhance Crown brand leadership that starts with lift trucks

Company Goal would be to drive players to the platform

For end user, or dealer channel benefit - Provide safety to Small/Medium scale Warehouses.
Enhance Crown brand leadership that starts with lift trucks - Will enhance lift truck experience by improving operator safety.

HOW WOULD WE SELL CROWN’S IPS SAFETY?

REAL-TIME LOCATION TRACKING FEATURE
The InfoLink cloud platform will be connected to the John (Manager’s) dashboard as well as Crown’s IPS Safety. Crown’s IPS Safety would be attached to the Crown Forklift and will assist Jack (Operator) as well as report data back to John.