Modernizing a Legacy Production Planning Platform
Enterprise SaaS
Live in production
Web Application
Internal Platform
Location
Fargo, ND
Role
Sr. UX Designer
Year
2023-24
Duration
~18 months
Users
200+ across US and Mexico
Overview
A mission-critical two-system workflow — embedded in daily manufacturing operations — needed to modernize without disrupting the billions in production decisions running through it every day.
Problem
A billion-dollar workflow held together by manual effort.
Production planning at John Deere ran across two disconnected systems — a legacy planning tool and an Excel-based forecasting workflow. Every day, bridging them required a manual file upload that took 2–4 hours, with no visibility into whether it succeeded. On a production line where planning errors cost millions, that was an unacceptable daily risk.
Solution
Redesign the workflow. Rebuild the platform. Earn the trust.
The approach was deliberately phased — automate what was breaking the workflow first, then rebuild the platform around how planning decisions are actually made, not how data is stored. Because stakeholders managing billion-dollar decisions couldn't abandon Excel overnight, every change was designed to reduce dependency gradually rather than force a cutover that would never have been accepted.
Impact
Results that outlasted the project.
Operational efficiency improved by ~30%, user satisfaction by ~25% — validated through iterative usability testing. The legacy platform was retired through a migration that 200+ planners and forecasters across US and Mexico chose on their own timeline. The manual handoff that once consumed hours daily was fully eliminated. A component system built from scratch outlived the project and was adopted across multiple applications org-wide.
Overview
How do you redesign a system responsible for billions in production decisions — without breaking the trust of the people using it?
John Deere’s production planning relied on a legacy platform that had accumulated years of complexity without ever being designed around how planners actually worked.
Critical functions were buried deep in the interface. Two fundamentally different workflows — forecasting and production planning — were forced into the same environment. The freeze system governing billion-dollar production decisions was poorly understood even by stakeholders responsible for it.
Planners had learned to cope. Five browser tabs open at all times. External documents constantly referenced. Excel used whenever they needed actual clarity.
The system technically worked — but only because users had learned how to work around it.
How the System actually worked
This wasn't one platform. It was two systems held together by manual effort.
daily
Forecasters update the Excel forecast
The Bottleneck
Manual file upload to legacy tool
Processing
Legacy tool converts forecast into production plan
Daily
Planners adjust and finalize the production plan
Why this mattered: Billions of dollars in production decisions moved through this workflow every day. Any disruption had direct downstream consequences on manufacturing. That's why stakeholders couldn't simply switch systems — and why every design decision had to make the transition feel safe, not just possible.
Research
If the tool had existed for decades — why was it still broken?
Because no one had mapped what the work actually looked like. The inefficiency had become so normalized it was invisible to everyone inside it.
9
In-depth contextual interviews with planners and forecasting leads across US and Mexico
~1K
Data points synthesized into 12 core workflow and usability insights
$B
In daily production value running through this workflow — the constraint shaping every decision
2
Systems — Disconnected tools never designed to work together
Key insights
USER group
Who I Was Designing For
Two groups depended on this system every day — but the platform had never been designed around either of them.
The System Tension: Both groups depended on each other — yet operated with almost no shared visibility. Changes made in Excel only reached planners after manual uploads, creating friction at every point where the workflows intersected.
Understanding the System
Before redesigning the interface, I needed to understand the workflow behind it.
Early research revealed that many of the challenges weren’t simply UI problems. They were symptoms of a system that had evolved over time without a clear shared understanding of how planning actually worked. Forecast data moved across multiple systems before becoming a finalized production plan, with manual uploads and freeze points shaping when planners could intervene.
To make sense of this ecosystem, I stepped back and created a process map that visualized how forecasts moved through the system, where planners interacted with the data, and where friction occurred. The map surfaced key breakdown points — manual uploads, moments where data froze, and places where planners relied on external tools to complete their work.
More importantly, it became a shared artifact that aligned stakeholders, engineers, and product owners around the same understanding of the system, helping guide the redesign that followed.
Solution
How did the platform evolve once the workflow was understood?
Every change focused on reducing friction in a system that could not afford to fail. Rather than redesigning individual screens, the goal was to align the platform with how planning decisions were actually made.
02 — Constraints aren't obstacles, they're the brief
Stakeholders managing billions in production decisions had legitimate reasons not to trust a new system. Designing with those constraints — not around them — is what made the legacy platform's retirement possible. The phased migration wasn't a compromise. It was the only approach that had a real chance of working. This project fundamentally changed how I approach rigid stakeholder environments. When the path forward feels blocked, the constraint itself is usually pointing at the real problem — and the real opportunity.