User Interface Design Proposal in APO
By Judith Magyar, Kathleen McSweeney and Johanna Hafey, SAP AG – Updated: January 15, 2004
Abstract
This article provides insights into how one team of SAP user interface designers used the Cooper Goal-directed® design methodology to design the Plan Evaluator interface. This design is a proposal and has not been implemented.
Read the feedback
The Power / Pleasure Principle
APO, SAP's Advanced Planner and Optimzer, is the complete tool set needed for optimizing supply chain processes. Not exactly a simple task. Its flexible architecture can be configured to solve planning problems on the operational, tactical and strategic levels. The solution uses state-of-the-art methods like mixed integer linear programming (CPLEX), constraint programming and genetic algorithms. How can such a highly complex and powerful tool be even remotely easy to use? It's not, but we're determined to make it easier by incorporating Goal-directed® design into our development process.
Goal-directed® design is a design methodology developed by Alan Cooper, a software author and visionary whose industry credits include the visual programming interface for Microsoft's Visual Basic. Cooper, who is also the co-founder of Cooper Interaction Design, strongly believes that users of powerful software should not have to forfeit the pleasure of a good user experience.
Goal-directed® design focuses on people and their goals, not on features and technology.
What makes Cooper's methodology so successful is that it places the goals of the user at the center of the design process . Instead of focusing exclusively on the underlying technologies or the tasks users must perform, the process identifies what it is that users want to accomplish in the first place and results in a design that satisfies those goals.
Cooper has developed a unique way to tackle this process:
- conduct a broad investigation of the users of the product
- create personas, or virtual users, with real lives, jobs and goals who replace the elastic, faceless user and serve as design tools
- analyze the information gathered in the investigation to find the most appropirate design direction for the product
- create a detailed design of the interface with an in-depth look at all its screens, objects, relationships, layouts and behaviors
Designing the Plan Evaluator
A small team of SAP developers and designers used this methodology to design an interface proposal for the Plan Evaluator, an APO tool that allows planners to evaluate the quality of simulated production plans in order to find the best solution for a particular planning problem.
The Investigation
We visited four SAP customers to find out more about production planning and the people who do it. We watched planners while they worked and asked them questions such as: What is the planning process? How do you resolve problems? Do you collaborate with other members in your organization? If so, how? How do you know when you have a good plan? What are the major challenges that exist in the process?
Obviously, planning processes and priorities are different from industry to industry, company to company. While the number one priority at one company is 100% capacity utilization at all times, at another, the focus is on bottlenecks and due dates. Some companies aim to support the customer commit date at all costs, for others the challenge is to create the right mix in tactical and strategic decisions. The planners we talked to, however, all have a lot in common. What they like most about their job is the constant challenge, the big picture view they have of their companies and the knowledge that a good plan can improve production and profits. What they dislike? They all agree that a plan is never finished, and no matter how good a plan is, it's still just a plan, subject to any number of unexpected events they have no control over. What's a German planner to do if a French truckers'strike across the border prevents on-time delivery of auto parts crucial to his production plan? Call purchasing? Send out email? Bang his head against the wall?
Planners feel pressured to create better plans but feel frustrated because they don't have the right tools and information to make meaningful changes. Basically, planners plan for the future based on their knowledge of the past. As one planner bluntly described the difficulties of his job: it's like driving by looking in the rearview mirror.
Our investigation revealed that planners need a tool that will enable them to plan early, run multiple scenarios for comparative purposes, and provide ongoing flexibility. Following the Cooper methodology, our next step was to create a virtual production planner who would represent all the real planners we interviewed. Our production planner is Ralf Sonne, and that's who the Plan Evaluator was designed for!
Ralf Sonne, our Primary Persona
Ralf Sonne is a 48-year-old production planner at Klinger AG in southern Germany who earned his degree in Industrial Engineering and has worked in the planning environment for over 20 years. His focus is on getting the kinks out of the system, making things flow, and fostering good workmanship among the line planners and the people who run the shop floor. Ralf is trustworthy and approachable; his colleagues often come to him when they run into sticky problems. He is married and has two teenagers.
Ralf has four primary goals:
- Increase profit through better planning
- Improve the process
- Keep things humming
- Leave work at work
Production Planning Scenario for Klinger AG
Next, we developed a planning scenario for Ralf’s product group, spark plugs. In this scenario, Ralf uses the Production Planning Board to create three different what-if simulations using the baseline optimized plan generated by the system and relying on his up-to-date knowledge of what’s happening on the shop floor.
Production plans are typically large and complex sets of data. The trained eye of Ralf Sonne can detect problems fairly quickly in a single plan, but comparing multiple criteria in multiple plans is tedious and time-consuming; often the best solution is never found due to the time pressure to produce a plan. Ralf needs the Plan Evaluator in order to compare the three simulations side-by-side while only looking at the key figures he knows are critical for Klinger.
In the Plan Evaluator, a template setup for Ralf contains the important key figures for Klinger: overall penalty costs, due date violations, total setup costs, minimum days’ supply violations, setup times, and capacity utilization. The template also includes the specific customers, resources, and raw materials associated with those key figures that he is concerned about.
In order to view the critical key figures associated with the simulations he ran in the Production Planning Board, he simply opens the Plan Evaluator, selects the appropriate template and time horizon, and clicks Evaluate. The Evalution Results table displays the three simulations and all the key figures associated with them. He accesses rich detail behind the key figures in the Evaluation Results table in order to analyze the results. He also uses the Overall Score (derived from Klinger’s production goals) displayed in the Evaluation Results table to compare the simulations.
In our scenario two of Ralf’s final simulations are good, but he needs input from the divisional planner and the sales manager to make a final decision about which one is best because they have more information about upcoming orders. He sends the simulations to them via the Plan Evaluator so they can decide collaboratively in their afternoon meeting on which plan to implement. Additionally, Ralf uses the Plan Evaluator to create monthly status reports by creating graphical representations of comparisons of production results from multiple months, and actual versus planned production results according to the company’s critical key figures.
Personas and Scenarios Shape the Design
Everyday when we went into our design sessions for the Plan Evaluator, we took with us the description and photograph of Ralf and the scenarios that describe Ralf accomplishing his goals using the Plan Evaluator. These two design tools are the source for every element of the Plan Evaluator design. We continued to use Ralf’s persona description and scenarios during design reviews with other designers so that they too could step into the skin of Ralf and help us make sure all the functionality he needs is included, the interface is not intimidating, and the screen breathes.
The Interface
The Plan Evaluator interface enables Ralf to compare multiple what-if simulations side-by-side according to the critical key figures for his company so he can make critical decisions or share the alternatives with upper management to promote collaborative decision-making.
Figure: Proposal for the Plan Evaluator user interface
Conclusion
Goal-directed® design has two great advantages: we in APO get to learn more about our end users and their concerns, and customers get the chance to contribute to the design and development of the tools they will eventually use. It's a win-win situation, and based on customer feedback so far, we know we are on the right track.
Comments and feedback are greatly appreciated and should be directed to the team responsible for creating the Plan Evaluator interface design:
| judith.magyar@sap.com |  |
kathleen.mcsweeney@sap.com |
| |
johanna.hafey@sap.com | |
Feedback
Dear SAP APO User Interface Designers,
I have worked in the APS/SCM space for my entire career including 10 years as Director of Business Development at Chesapeake Decision Sciences. I now teach Global Supply Chain Management and am an independent consultant to many companies in the SCM area. I read an article recently on the User Interface Design in APO which was one of the most interesting and insightful pieces I have ever seen. If you have a newsletter, fan club, user group, advisory board, whatever, I would like to join. Do you ever come to America? I would like to invite you to speak in one of my classes and meet with some of my clients who are struggling to make this stuff work.
Gerry Cleaves
