Improving Supply Chain Human-Machine Systems by the Analysis of Departmental-Level User Characteristics

Improving Supply Chain Human-Machine Systems by the Analysis of Departmental-Level User Characteristics

Kun Yang
Copyright: © 2024 |Pages: 14
DOI: 10.4018/IRMJ.337387
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Abstract

In this study, the authors aimed to enhance supply chain efficiency at Company A, a key player in China's manufacturing sector, by focusing on user-centric system design. The approach involved analyzing departmental-level user characteristics to inform the development of an optimized human-machine interface. To achieve this, they conducted focus groups and card sorting exercises, identifying specific user needs across departments like planning, purchasing, receiving, warehousing, production, and quality control. The application of these insights into system design led to significant operational improvements. Notably, time savings were observed in departments such as receiving (74.44%) and quality control (41.86%). This tailored approach underscored the importance of understanding and integrating user characteristics in supply chain systems, leading to enhanced productivity and a competitive edge. The study demonstrates the impact of user-focused system design in improving both efficiency and user satisfaction in supply chain management.
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Introduction

Accompanied by the development of information technology, the supply chain system is gradually becoming the most important tool for enterprise operation and revenue (Nuamah & Seong, 2017). The supply chain system integrates the information of every link in the enterprise supply chain, realizes the rational allocation of resources, strengthens the synergy between various departments, and continuously improves the productivity and international competitiveness of enterprises. As an operational supply chain system, user experience (UX) sensing is the primary problem to solve, and the satisfaction of system users directly affects the enterprise's behavior and decision-making (Cao et al., 2021). The main means to improve UX sensing is to help enterprises grasp the actual needs of users by analyzing the user characteristics of supply chain systems as well as designing friendly human-machine interfaces to help users use the system more conveniently to achieve the purpose of optimizing product design, improving product quality, enhancing UX, and improving the market competitiveness of enterprises (Kumar & Lee, 2022). Therefore, research on user characterization and human-machine interface design of supply chain systems has become a hot topic.

This paper takes the supply chain system of Company A, a key player in China's manufacturing sector, as the research object by investigating the actual business needs and supply chain characteristics of Company A (according to the company's supply chain process), developing the company's supply chain system by using focus groups and the card method, comparing the differences in the user characteristics of the supply chain's various departments and designing them into the system, realizing the system's human-computer interface function, and analyzing (using the UX questionnaire [UEQ]) the efficiency of each link of the optimized system and customer satisfaction to improve the company's supply chain efficiency and to provide theoretical data support for the user characteristic analysis and human-machine interface design of the supply chain system. There is a formal relationship between the company's use cases and the UX model for the UEQ analysis, which together constitute a complete UX that is essential for the development and growth of the company. At the same time, UX modeling is also closely related to efficiency, and good UX modeling can improve efficiency and promote the development and growth of the company. Therefore, companies should pay attention to UX and continuously optimize their products and services to increase user satisfaction and loyalty, thus improving their efficiency and competitiveness.

The innovation of this study is that it adopts a system design that gives user characteristics to achieve user-centered system optimization; it proposes an effective task management strategy by analyzing the correlation between task completion time and satisfaction to provide system efficiency and user satisfaction; and it analyzes in depth the role of the human-computer interface function, demonstrating its significant impact on improving processing efficiency and reducing resource consumption. It provides theoretical and practical references for the optimization and enhancement of enterprise supply chain management systems.

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