Case Study: MiScheduling
MiScheduling is an application within the MiBiew suite that focuses on providing tools to Dispatch agents to create and schedule New home construction work orders & warranty requests. Time is invaluable in home construction and delays are costly. Our north star is to reduce time waste during these processes.
Core Feature:
Creating Work
A Dispatcher’s current process for creating a work order consists of copy and pasting past work orders into a plain text field and editing to fit the new request. This leads to wasted time in emails between dispatchers and field technicians to answer basic questions.
Problems
— Creating a new work order action hard to find
— Time consuming to create work orders
— Lack of consistency when creating work orders
— Creating work orders is in a separate area, removing context from the day’s calendar
Solutions
— Create work order entry point made visible & accessible
— Minimized amount of information to be collected to the essentials
— Simplified pattern of data collection that is consistent across all work types
— Drawer allows for dispatcher to see the days activity while creating orders
Core Feature:
Live Calendar View
Dispatchers only have insight into the number of jobs a technician is assigned for a day. Any updates about work and jobs going over expected time are not captured until the field technician sends an email with updates. This leads to unwanted idle time when emails are missed by the dispatcher or buried among other updates.
Solutions
— High level summary view of what plumbers day looks like
— Accurate live updates of jobs allows for efficient workload balancing
— Remove idle time with automatic job assignments upon completion
Problems
— No active visibility into issues and job lengths
— Dependence on emails for updates from field technicians
— Frequent down time from field techs not having an active job
Core Feature:
Work Management
The ability to schedule, reschedule and follow up on work orders is essential for a dispatcher to fulfill their duties. Currently, this is being handled through emails and a shared google doc. This creates issues with orders getting mishandled, lost and repeatedly delayed.
Solutions
— Moved ready to schedule work orders to the calendar screen
— Created a dedicated area for work orders on hold
— Highlighted stale work orders and provided clear actions to take
Problems
— Frequent misplacement and losing of unresolved requests
— No dedicated space for work orders waiting on outside inputs
— Poor visibility of current calendar for ready to schedule orders
— Lack of prioritization for work orders on hold