When I started my co-op at Desktop Metal in May 2018, the team was utilizing three different programs simultaneously to track their parts. These programs did not integrate with each other and left the team to manually update all portals which left a lot of room for error. The team was previously using google drive to track the reservations along with trello to track the progress and relying on a print test database (internal tracker for another team within Desktop Metal) for limited information on failures.

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Goal:

Implement a tracking service that can track the current stage of all parts in the queue as well as track data on the parts such as success rate, number of attempts, failure types and more. This system should allow users to visually see the parts as well as be able to search by name, company, contact and other vital information. 

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Implementation:

After conducting research on different websites, I found that Airtable would be the most useful for our needs. I was able to import the google drive spreadsheet of companies and reservations into Airtable. Next, I updated these reservations for companies with all the parts that were printed for each from the Trello date. I added columns for all the information that need tracking including number of attempts, success rate, failure types, printing settings changed and many more. Additionally, I created a guide for users to read to learn what information to add into each card to ensure that all team members present and future would be able to properly update the table even beyond the time period of my co-op. I also managed the database and kept track of everyone's parts to make sure that the data was entered properly. This was especially important in the beginning as it was still new to the team members.

 

For confidentiality reasons, I cannot put any photos of the database as it includes many customer parts that are not shareable.