Providing a laser cutting infrastructure required a lot of manual administrational effort.
Several hundreds of users work with the laser cutter machines at ETH Zurich. The management of user access and the billing of production jobs were done manually without any standardized processes. A digital tool to manage the usage of laser cutter machines was not available.
We carefully analyzed user needs to implement the suitable digital management tool.
To develop a digitized solution for laser cutter management we followed an user-centred and iterative development approach. Graphical user interfaces were tested using wire framing and paper prototypes. Only after having a clear understanding of user interactions and needs the technical solution was developed using the python-based web framework Django. The connectivity to access usage data was retrofitted to the industrial laser cutting machines.
An operational system to reduce administrational effort and to automatically invoice users was developed.
An IoT application called pd|z make connects the laser cutter machines to a web application. An intuitive web application allows users to book temporary access to the machines and post their production jobs on project accounts. User management and invoicing happens now automatically in digitalised processes.
6
laser machines
1000+
yearly users