Mobile task management and decision support system

Graphical screen and workflow designer, Mobile devices

General description of key2operate

key2operate is a business process support system for users, who need to execute tasks manually in or around certain production plants.

The system allows the creation of workflows for modeling arbitrary business processes on mobile clients. key2operate has an own database and stores all runtime data of the workflows inside it.

The work scheduling department can schedule tasks to different users and different mobile devices.

As a first step, the workflows which shall run on the mobile devices are designed by a person who will make use of design tools which key2operate provides for this purpose.

After a workflow is designed, it will be sent to the mobile clients.

The user then takes the mobile device where his workflow is available for work. The workflow data is stored in a database on the mobile device, in order to independently work on tasks when the intranet of the company cannot be reached. This means, that the daily work can be done independently of whether the device is connected or not. As soon as the device enters a region where a connection can be established, it automatically connects to the server and updates the server database.

The server database takes care of the data synchronization and conflicts will be managed in the right way. The server also acquires the relevant data from the connected system and distributes updates to the Manufacturing IT systems.

Beside other activities, key2operate can be used for reporting of operations, inspection rounds and maintenance activities within production sites. It allows the configuration of almost every manual business process.

To make the use of the system more transparent, here an example of a business process:

A user has to maintain certain equipments / machines per day. He will get his task list on the mobile device together with documents that describe the activity he has to perform. The mobile device may be equipped with a barcode scanner. It identifies in the first step of the maintenance activity, whether the user is on the right equipment by scanning a barcode of the machine (could be done as well with photo recognition or RFID or any other technology). After this check, the device stores the date and time, when the user arrived on the equipment. In the next tasks on this specific equipment it guides the user to do certain checks on the machine (for example by showing some documentation of how to do a specific activity). After the finalization of all the activities and the manual entry of some check data, the system stores the end date and time of the activity. If the mobile device is in an online mode, it can immediately connect with the server and update it with the new information about the tasks that were performed. It could even support the user during the activity by showing real time data from the process, in case this is needed.
The user then proceeds with the next activity shown in the task list...