Smart trunk design for light commercial vehicles of craftsmen with a human-centric approach

Abstract

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.