A customer from the manufacturing sector sought our help to develop automated solutions using a series of QA checklists. The project manager had an IT background and saw the potential of extending Jira to the wider organization. Checklists became the key to making that happen.
Customer Challenges
As a large manufacturing company coordinating complex work across multiple plants, the customer needed streamlined, fail-proof solutions for every day processes. Simply handling all the notifications necessary for a change request to make it through the chain of approvals was a full time job.
Other processes, like changing a part on a live production line required precise timing, preparation and coordination.
Enter Checklists for Jira (Pro).
Solution – Combining Checklists, Jira Automation and Workflow Validators
The customer now uses Jira, and Checklists for Jira across a wide range of teams, including engineering, operations, procurement, and leadership. Combining checklists with automation proved to be the key to creating secure, automated processes.
Change Notifications and Approvals with Checklists + Jira Automation
Ensuring that everyone involved (Engineering, Bill of Materials, Procurement teams) are notified of and approve changes is now a fully-automated process.
- When an engineering change work item is created, an automation rule adds the first required checklist and sends a notification to the required Approver.
- Once the Approver has completed their checklist, the work item is automatically transitioned to the next status. A new checklist is added, and the appropriate user or team (let’s say someone from the Cost Analysis team) begins work on the Jira item.
- The cycle repeats using automation to:
- Transition the Jira work item once the current checklist is complete.
- Add a new checklist for the next team that will handle the work item.
- Notify the team that the Jira work item is ready for their attention.
The use of checklists ensures that the required steps are complete as the Change Notification progresses from one team to another. Emails are sent to notify teams that the Jira work item needs their attention. Risk of errors and or delays in the handoff are greatly reduced.
Checklists, Automation and Validators for a Running Line Change
An automation rule for managing the change out of parts on a live production line uses checklists as one of two conditions for executing the change:
- Checklist completion
- Inventory remaining < 20% (data uploaded to the system)
The checklist completion condition ensures that the change is not executed until all preparations have been completed. The inventory remaining condition keeps the change from taking place before it’s necessary, avoiding wasted inventory.
Checklist Validation
Because checklists are used for crucial criteria, the company deploys checklist validators to keep Jira work items from being transitioned before the checklist(s) have been completed. Since they use multiple checklists on any given Jira work item, the HeroCoders support team helped them develop a Regular Expression validator to check for completion of a specific checklist.
Results
Using checklists in combination with Jira automation allowed the customer to save on operational costs (reducing both FTE and unused inventory), enhance visibility and trackability of key processes, and decrease risk.
If you’d like to learn more about what your manufacturing teams could be doing with checklists, contact us for a demo. Our team is happy to help develop solutions for your needs.
