TÜV Rheinland
A New Global Workflow Tool
TÜV Rheinland is an internationally leading, independent inspection and certification firm with a 145-year history. Its workers inspect technical plant, products, and services and provide support for business projects, processes, and information security all around the globe.
From the GS label for certified safety to ergonomics as well as inspections for contaminants, TÜV Rheinland’s approval labels are highly sought after all the world over.
Together with TÜV Rheinland, we are working on a platform to accompany their processes and offer orientation to teams and employees on complex projects. Creating work orders, structuring workflows, and carrying out projects – all these steps will be made easier. It is being designed for the products division, which examines, for example, whether a toy can be sold in a specific country or whether a T-shirt can carry a certification symbol. The platform is planned to be implemented worldwide at all of TÜV Rheinland’s locations on all continents and provide help for over 5,000 employees in their daily work.
Our collaboration with denkwerk – which crossed national and continental borders – was perfect, with them even supporting us on-site in China and Japan.
We carried out user research and insight discovery for the international processes. The main question throughout this was how to gain acceptance of the processes in different countries and how to incorporate cultural differences. What resulted from this were flexible systems for roles and user privileges that accommodated country-specific working habits.
The approach for the project is based on the dual-track agile method. denkwerk is responsible for the discovery track, providing an international user experience and new global patterns.
The focus on intuitive interfaces for our employees helps us drive our digitalization using the new platform and continue optimizing our processes.
The agile team consists of more than thirty members – five of whom come from denkwerk. They work at seven different locations: Yokohama, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei, London, Nuremberg, and Cologne. denkwerk’s employees call their colleagues in Shanghai and Yokohama at seven o’clock in the morning so that the intercontinental collaboration between Asia and Europe works smoothly. The local times there are 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. respectively.
