This thesis project aims at improving inventory management and awareness of craftsmen in their light commercial vehicles, specifically in the trunk area. The term commercial vehicle is used to identify a vehicle which main purpose is to transport goods or materials. The light commercial vehicle market, comprising vans and trucks, in Europe is growing rapidly every year and craftsmen are one of the important customers of them. They see their vans as trustworthy colleagues that help them to bring their materials everywhere. However the current state of their vans with different storage solutions do not contribute for solving the issues that they face during intense work days. Those built storage solutions are only focusing on providing space for carried materials and does not contribute to craftsmen’s work performance in any way. In fact this approach reveals major user and context related issues that downgrades the productivity due to the lack of practicality. This status quo is questioned and a smarter solutions to improve inventory awareness and accessibility developed with this graduation thesis. The particular topic is analysed with a human-centric approach. Interviews were conducted with multiple craftsmen to define the problems that they face with, understand their actual needs and observe their van’s trunk area with carried materials. Deficiency in inventory management which is a symptom of several major difficulties faced within the trunk, results as disruptions to the workflow. Having a low-stock of a certain material, travelling additionally to the supplier to cover the deficiency and physically effortful routine controls for the inventory are some of the aspects that causes the disruptions and impracticalities.

The project’s outcome is a product and service design that offers automated control system dedicated for consumables which are small sized materials with high frequency of use. Screws, bolts, fasteners, elbows are some of them that are always carried in the trunk area. The concept utilises accessible sensor technologies integrated to a tangible unit in order to provide momentarily and accurate informations regarding the state of consumables. It enables the connectivity between the inventory, the van and the craftsman by enabling continuous monitoring. The flexibility of the system results as an adaptation to craftsman’s way of work by offering personal settings and configuration in order to be able to procure relevant and suggestive feedbacks, to ultimately improve their inventory management and work efficiency.

Introduction: The context of mobility is changing rapidly and new mobility solutions are gaining momentum. Ford is expanding towards an auto and a mobility company and experiments with offering mobility solutions. These experiments should help Ford in discovering emerging opportunities. Traditional product development is not suitable for the creation, development and realisation of mobility solutions, so a different approach is needed. The Innovation Management and Mobility team within the Research and Advanced Engineering department in Aachen is seeking and learning to adopt new approaches to research and design. Service innovation is proposed as a user-centered design methodology to help the team develop mobility solutions. Within Ford, service innovation is a multi-disciplinary design approach focused on creating and developing mobility solutions from a holistic user perspective. A multi-disciplinary design approach Service innovation is a design approach in which designers are able to facilitate and execute the process. They can help to bridge research, design and engineering by inviting all stakeholders in the process. Creating mobility solutions Service innovation is an approach that balances user, technology and business aspects of a concept to create a valuable and feasible solution. A holistic perspective on users
To know what is valuable for the user, service innovation is a methodology that helps to create a holistic user perspective. It is essential to create something of value for the user in their everyday live, so this methodology helps to investigate (future) user needs and wants. Method: Research is done to discover the specific needs of the team to be able to adopt the methodology to offer the most value to the team. After an internship period of sixteen weeks in which I was active participant, interviewer and observer I collected insights that informed the rest of the project. Results: The results of this project can be grouped into three aspects. A user-centered design methodology The Mobility team was introduced to a user-centered design methodology through workshops from ID-Studiolab and application to specific projects by me. Helping the team to apply it In my internship I have helped the team to apply the methodology to specific projects and use the proposed methods and tools. This helped the team to put users more central in their innovation efforts. A service innovation toolkit. The created toolkit helps the team to structure the innovation process and apply the methodology in a diverse set of projects. A manual is designed as reference guide for the methodology, methods and tools and the templates and posters are designed to help facilitate the innovation process in specific projects. This helps Ford put users more central in their innovation efforts and create valuable and meaningful solutions for real people. Recommendations: To further develop the user-centered mindset within Ford, I propose to introduce other departments to service innovation and the user-centered design methodology. A more strategic place for design in combination with research including user research, technology development and business model innovation would greatly benefit the development of mobility solutions. Investing in user-centered capabilities helps to facilitate the service innovation process.
For now, Service innovation and the service innovation toolkit help the team to create and develop mobility solutions by adopting a holistic perspective on users.