How can a conveyor make production sites better?

Let's talk about successful production. If you produce a good and popular product on the market at a competitive price, then your business will grow 100%. Further, how you grow will determine subsequent success or failure. If you grow quantitatively, simply satisfying demand, then most likely you are waiting for problems or closure. If you increase efficiency, then you have a chance and this chance is very good.

To improve production efficiency in the middle of the XIX century the conveyor was invented. The speed of movement of the conveyor directly affects the speed of production. The speed depends on the correct selection of operations on the sites and their automation. By adjusting the speed of the conveyor - you can get a demanded product at a competitive price and the required quality.
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But here is the question. Is it possible to put creative work (customized services) on the conveyor? We will answer this question on the example of website development. “Unlike mass production, each site is an individual product that solves individual problems.” - many say. Yes, they are right, but what does that change? Let's see. Welcome to the WebCanape pipeline.

WebCanape Virtual Pipeline

From the starting point to the end, the conveyor passes in 7 days. One day, one of the seven typical groups of operations is carried out: the formation of a task for a project, production (we parallelize into three lines - site design, site content, programming), coordination, testing, project launch, retesting, project delivery. Notice, a part of the operations is a creative process.

In order for the conveyor to move without interruption and delays, the executive manager, who oversees the project at all stages, at the first stage collects all the necessary materials. The main list, without which the project cannot be launched, includes: text and graphic materials, elements of corporate identity, photographic materials, data for filling in product catalogs, domain access and hosting. After collecting all the materials, you can start the conveyor and guarantee non-stop its work, which in turn guarantees the creation of the site on time.



At each of the stages, production resources are selected in such a way that the conveyor can handle twice as many orders as it arrives at the entrance. This allows you to smooth out the uneven demand and work with projects from the buffer lines.

The project gets to the buffer line if it cannot move further due to the tightening of coordination with the client of the design or filling. After coordination, the project returns to the main line and continues to move forward. At the same time, the calendar terms of the project are delayed, but the contractual terms (we consider them in standard days) are prolonged by the delay time in the buffer zone. Remember these two parameters, we will need them later.

Naturally, the presence of projects in the buffer zone is a liability in production. The more of them, the greater the degree of uncertainty in the system. This directly affects the decrease in overall production efficiency and the rate of money turnover in the system. The number of such projects and their downtime should be minimized. This is the main task of the executive managers after the project is launched.

Where it lives and what the pipeline looks like

Despite the fact that the conveyor is virtual, the workplaces (production units) in the office, as in a real enterprise, are built in the correct production chain. Although the order goes from node to node through virtual channels, the physical distance between the nodes and their relative position is very important. This allows you to better represent and control the production process, optimize communications and working hours.



The executive manager controls the movement of the project on the conveyor using CanapeCRM. In this system, all statistics on the stages of the project movement are collected, notifications are generated for clients, etc.

As soon as the project arrives on the conveyor, the executive manager, in accordance with the regulations, deploys and adjusts the basic assembly, places the tasks on the production sites. Redmine is used for this.

For operational planning of loading sites, information boards are used, which show how many projects are on the line at the moment, in what status and what release dates. The scoreboard uses the principle of traffic light that everyone understands. Green - the project fits within deadlines, yellow - deadlines are close to the deadline, red - the project is late. The color of the project indicates the priority they need to deal with.

At each production site there is a team leader. He is engaged in planning, is responsible for the high-quality execution of operations in accordance with the standards and regulations, provides training and growth for beginners. In general, he oversees the smooth operation of his segment of the conveyor.
Upon completion of the production, statistics are collected and the project is evaluated by 4 main parameters: deadlines in calendar days, deadlines in standard days, compliance with standards in standard hours and customer feedback. This allows you to objectively determine the success of the project.

Parameters such as the effectiveness of the site as a marketing tool are evaluated by the product management department even at the stage of forming a typical solution on the basis of which sites are assembled on the conveyor.

The image below shows what the site looks like before the designer and content manager get to work and after they have worked.



As this happens and not only, read on. On our site you can see examples of work on this technology.

How do sites get better? Pipeline stages

Putting to work. Before the project goes to work - the manager forms the task for development. The task in our case is the working prototype of the site. According to the principle of "canape", the manager forms a modular composition of the project. Each of the modules has a number of visual and functional states, correctly selecting which, we get high-quality blank for the future site. The task of the manager at this stage is to choose the most optimal proven solutions that are suitable for the specific tasks of the client. Further designers, copywriters and programmers will work with these modules.

Design and layout. The graphical grid of typical solutions is thought out and tested two weeks before getting into the release of the base assembly and already further on the conveyor. The main job of the designer on the conveyor is to work out the promotional component of the site, in a few seconds to interest the visitor and show that he got to where he wanted. After that, the interface elements (or modules) of the site are worked out in order to correctly place accents and maintain the main graphic image.

All graphic elements of the site are pre-grouped into smart objects (menu, header, authorization, etc.), which the designer then works with. This is done for convenience and order. Here are two monitors designer very useful. In one, the designer works with a smart object, and in the second he sees the site entirely. Cutting design is automated using slices available in Photoshop. If everything is done correctly, then a lot of time is saved on this and the result is usually good.

Filling. First prepare the texts. At this stage it is necessary to achieve at least 97% uniqueness. This is necessary for further successful search promotion. To check the program is used ETXT.

When placing texts on the site, two types of templates are used: design and service. One example of a text design template is the “selling section”. There are several variants of such templates. This allows content managers, without attracting a designer and coder, to quickly make high-quality content of the site. Service templates are needed more for search engines. These are fragments of the site, covered with special micro-markup, which only search engines see. With its help, search engines understand where the phone number, address, products, reviews, etc. on the site, which in turn has a good effect on the results of site issuance in search engines.

Development of the functional. If it is necessary to develop a unique functionality that is not included in the basic assembly, the project goes to the programming area. At the press of a button, the programmer creates a copy of the base site for its completion. All changes to the program code are recorded through the version control system. This allows later (at the technical support stage) to see the history of project refinements. When the modifications are ready, a copy of the site merges with the main one and the project is submitted for testing.

Testing. Testing takes place in two iterations. In the first step, automated tests are run that verify the correctness of the site’s work (correct setting of search engine optimization parameters, work of forms ...). In the second step, the tester looks at the overall state of the project for compliance with the quality criteria (appearance, content, notification texts, non-standard functionality, etc.). The same two iterations are performed after the project is laid out on the hosting and the domain is linked.

Completion of the project. At this stage many organizational tasks are being solved. It turns out the second part of the payment :) All statistics are collected from production sites (development time in standard days, actual days, in hours) to compare the collected figures with the planned ones (this will be needed to adjust the premiums of the management team). Request feedback from the client. The project is published in the portfolio, transferred for warranty support and to the promotion and advertising department.

We have listed the main stages of the project movement. Only at the stage of delivery of the project more than 30 points that must be performed by the manager. In order not to forget all this, we use a corporate set of regulations and rules. This is such a thick handbook of managers.

Instead of conclusion

What is important for the client? Price. Timing. Quality. What does a conveyor guarantee?

1. Automation significantly reduces production costs - price
2. Conveyor belt exactly arrive at the appointed date - time
3. All stages will be completed, all regulations will be implemented - quality

Of course, not everything is perfect in this world. And on the conveyors are failures. But if you strive for excellence, you can achieve good results. If you have questions, we are ready to answer them.

Vasily Churanov and WebCanape team