Who is the Client

A US-based manufacturer of semiconductor processing equipment used in silicon wafer processing, with an annual sale of approx. $10B.

The Challenge

The client’s employees were not able to communicate safety hazards at the manufacturing facility on the go, since the only way to report these problems was via the desktop web interface. After an incident was reported, it used to take almost 25 minutes for a safety inspector to complete a safety inspection, which created a big backlog of inspections.

Workflow approvals were often delayed as they got delivered via email and had high chances of getting missed. Lack of proactive hazard reporting and mitigation resulted in a high number of incidents, causing loss of productivity.

The client wanted a proactive reporting of safety hazards and take corrective measures in time to prevent incidents, improve work conditions, and create an incident-free workplace.

The Solution

Team GSPANN closely analyzed the requirements and helped the client adopt Xamarin as the development platform and use .NET for the backend after completing a small proof of concept (POC). We built a cross-platform mobile app for the client that enabled each employee to report safety hazards conveniently from their phones and enabled inspectors to promptly inspect the hazard and trigger mitigation workflow from their mobile devices.

We developed the app from end-to-end, including conceptualization, building UI mockups, focus group testing, build-out, security penetration testing, QA, app store deployment, and post-production support for 3 months. We rolled out the application to a set of beta testers first, which went through multiple iterations of testing, before rolling out the production version to 10,000 employees.

The mobile app allows employees to proactively report safety hazards and track the completion of corrective and preventive actions from their mobile devices. The ongoing enhancements allow better data collection by the inspector for analysis and help the client focus on high-risk areas.

The solution included using Kony middleware to connect Xamarin to .NET backend that provided a secure tunnel for the API calls and was hosted on-premise with backend servers. A metrics collection application was created to collect data for any errors observed by the users and to report the crashes.

The app has 80% code reuse between iOS and Android platforms, which reduced the upfront cost of development and ongoing support cost as no separate iOS and Android engineers are required. The app has an intuitive and pleasant UX design that also minimizes the time-to-completion (TTC) of the core tasks.

Advanced analytics features were built to identify user friction and bottlenecks, such as smart notifications, barcode reader integration, facility detection, and custom camera interface, achieving the highest automation possible to make safety hazard reporting easy for the user.

Business Impact

  • The mobile app is being used worldwide, across 12 locations, with 10,000 employees benefitting from it.
  • We saved 40% of cost over traditional native development by developing a cross-platform application with 80% code reusability.
  • Our solution enabled automated reporting of app crashes (the report is generated once a day).
  • A 63% decrease in key employee behavior-related incidents.
  • 97% year-on-year increase in reporting of the foreseen safety hazards.
  • Time taken to complete an inspection reduced by 63%.

Technologies Used

Xamarin. An open-source mobile UI framework from Microsoft for building iOS, Android, and Windows apps with .NET from a single shared codebase
Kony Middleware. Manages data through security, system integration, scalability, communications, cross-platform support, and more
Mobileiron. A unified endpoint and enterprise mobility management for mobile devices, such as multi-factor authentication
Apperian. Mobile application management platform that does not require app code modifications or software development kits
Jira. A proprietary issue tracking product developed by Atlassian that allows bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management

Related Capabilities

Build High-Quality Business and Consumer Mobile Applications

Our mobility capabilities empower employees to connect on the go and enable customers to stay connected with your brand from anywhere and anytime. Our suite of enterprise mobility services aligns the application capabilities with your customers and the organization's expectations.

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