Order Tracking App Architecture

App Structure

This Functional Example is a single application in the Tulip Library, but much of the value comes with Tulip apps when dedicated apps can be built to support different user roles and needs.

Legacy order tracking solutions fail to hide any complexity from users, leading to error-prone processes, long deployment cycles, excessive training, and frustration for everyone involved.

When considering how much information (or how much of a process) to include in a single application, consider two different common approaches:

1. Each app is designed to suit one user role. Supervisors have different priorities, need different information, and need to act on orders differently than operators, so it might make sense to split your applications based on the users who are using them
2. Each app is designed to solve 1 problem. For more complicated Tulip deployments, it is critical to maintaining Composability throughout your Tulip infrastructure. Segmenting Apps based on their function means down-the-road those same applications can be redeployed with little-to-no changes and drive immediate value.
   1. ex. In the case of order tracking, this might mean making a dedicated application to create apps, a separate app to audit running apps, and a separate app to view order Geneology or defects

In the Order Tracking Functional Example many of these different roles/functions have been combined into a single app to streamline the process of learning how to approach these concepts, but any of these core functions can/should be split across separate applications.

Core Order Tracking Roles

Understanding who will be using your app, and what they need from it is core to building apps that drive real business value from day one.

Operators

Operators are where the work happens, and are often the source of the most opportunity for process improvement. Work to improve the operator experience will drive value in multiples.

What Operators need to do their job

• Clear guidance on their priorities.
• All the knowledge needed to complete their tasks.
• All of the upstream dependencies met.
• Insight into their performance.
• Avenues to drive actions.

Supervisors/Production Managers

Getting the right work done, at the right time is the name of the game for Production Managers.

What Supervisors need to do their job

• Live insights into what is currently happening.
• Tooling to plan work and adjust work on the fly.
• Visibility into production backlog, priority, and targets.
• Mechanisms to interact with their operators.

Plant Managers

The buck stops with plant managers, and so getting the right data to make the right decisions becomes critical to success.

What PM's need to do their job

• Visibility into higher-level performance metrics
• Tooling to investigate the underlying data and find root-cause

App Breakdown

The Functional Example for Order Tracking serves as the core functionality needed to track orders:

• Create Orders
• View Orders
• Update Orders
• Schedule orders
• Update Order Quantities and Locations
• View Order details and history
• View insights based on Order data

As the Functional Example shows, all of the functionality can be combined in a single app, or any of its core functions can be leveraged in more segment applications.