↓ Problem
↓ Insight
↓ Idea
↓ Impact
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02x User Researchers
User-Centered Research & Insights
Team Management & Mentorship
DesignOps & Cross-Functional Processes
20% reduction in status inquiries due to visibility
The Problem
“I don’t care if it’s a railhead that doesn’t have employees because of COVID, or it’s a supplier that can’t supply a part that stops a line, or all the different things that go along with that. It would be great to have some transparency so that we could tell a customer that their vehicle was going to be here in two weeks, or 10 days, or four months, whatever, but be able to update them when something changes.”
Danny Wilson, Head of the Toyota National Dealer Advisory Council
Insight
Toyota began standing up individual product teams, each owned by different parts of the business, to execute on key visibility capabilities. However, it quickly became clear through our initial assignments that many teams were solving similar problems with significant overlap and dependency.
With multiple teams moving in parallel and no unifying framework, the risk wasn’t just redundancy. It was the likelihood of making inconsistent decisions that pulled Toyota further apart at a time when unity was critical.
We identified this as an opportunity for design to lead, not just by delivering screens but by shaping a cohesive experience strategy that could bridge silos. We knew our practices in enterprise design thinking, systems modeling, and cross-functional facilitation could help teams connect the dots and create solutions that were stronger together than apart.
To further understand the root of the problem, my team conducted over 100 interviews across 20+ roles, surfacing a clear pattern: Toyota didn’t just have a visibility problem; it had a communication problem.
In parallel, we mapped the end-to-end workflows across Toyota's vehicle supply chain to uncover the full operational ecosystem. We documented key actions, dependencies, and areas of friction across phases and roles.
This mapping effort gave teams a shared understanding of how things worked today and laid the groundwork for prioritizing and designing a more seamless, cross-functional experience.
Together, the user research and process mapping efforts uncovered the hidden forces behind Toyota's fragmented supply chain experience.
Teams operated with different frameworks for how concepts and relationships are defined. These misalignments extended beyond data tracking to fundamental disagreements about how the supply chain itself was understood.
For instance, one group might define a vehicle as "in transit" once it leaves the factory, while another only after it's loaded onto a railcar. These disconnects made it hard to coordinate actions, assign ownership, or surface issues.
- Without a shared language or data model, reconciling records was slow and error-prone.
- These mismatches strained communication and fragmented visibility.
- Cumbersome legacy tools compounded the problem with poor usability, manual data entry, and inconsistent accuracy.
These insights validated our perspective that Toyota’s visibility issues were rooted in a deeper communication breakdown. This breakdown stemmed from ontology drift, where teams used the same terms but with conflicting definitions. The findings gave us the evidence needed to align stakeholders around this idea and begin designing a unified platform not just for data, but for shared understanding.
They needed better communication.
Idea
We set out to bridge the gaps, not just in data but in dialogue.
We facilitated a series of design thinking workshops across Toyota’s Plano, TX campus, bringing together teams from Logistics, Supply Management, Quality, and Regional Operations. These sessions weren’t just for ideation. They were built around mutual understanding:
- Teams co-mapped workflows and surfaced tensions in communication.
- We validated role-specific personas to keep needs and pain points top of mind.
- Shared problem statements emerged that shaped cross-functional MVPs.
Rather than building siloed tools, we focused on uncovering shared needs and overlapping opportunities across the supply chain.
Workshops were held across Toyota’s NA headquarters in Plano, TX.
We framed our workshops around shared, cross-functional problems in order to co-create more aligned solutions.
MVP's were defined around capabilities to serve cross-funcitonal needs.
To guide product and design teams through ambiguity, we developed "Golden Threads," future-state narratives that tied together:
- Prioritized capabilities (like ETA accuracy or pipeline visibility)
- Cross-functional workflows (e.g., what happens when a vehicle is delayed?)
- Unified design principles and data requirements
The microsite served as a living artifact of our process from research insights to experience-based product roadmaps.
Each slice of the Golden Thread was more than a story. It was a modular design spec.
As our work progressed, we shifted our thinking toward a more coordinated system. One where different steps of a shared workflow could be owned by different teams and executed in harmony toward a common goal.
Helped teams quickly identify exceptions, bottlenecks, and capacity constraints across facilities. Visualizations surfaced operational pressure points for faster coordination.
Toyota Logistics Services pinpoints affected vehicles using geolocation data and real-time yard visibility.
Teams can assess facility conditions and view total inventory.
Enabled users to build collaborative reports and act as a hub for tracking, managing, and sharing updates about vehicle status across the supply chain.
Teams can create and share the query with additional context to cross-functional team members.
Query result views can be customized and distributed so teams are aligned on events and impact.
The shared views become a launching pad for a variety of supply chain management activities.
Served as the single source of truth for all vehicle data. Every user, from factory teams to dealers and customers, accessed role-based views into the same live record.
The old vehicle record existed in a legacy ‘green screen’ system across 30+ individual inquiry screens with severe limitations in usability, searchability, and scalability. Systems like this were commonplace, and resulted in it sometimes taking days to pull aggregate vehicle data.
The work is mysterious and important
This layout enabled Toyota to swap modules in and out based on user roles or permissions, ensuring that team members had access to the most relevant data.
The original layout for the vehicle journey followed a horizontal "pizza tracker" format, which quickly revealed limitations. It struggled to scale effectively, making it difficult to add new events or additional data points without compromising usability.
Additionally, the new vertical structure significantly improved usability on tablets and mobile devices, ensuring a seamless experience across different screen sizes.
Surfaced national and regional insights with proactive alerts around trends, delays, and risks—delivered to the right teams at the right time.
As the platform matured and more data became available, we worked closely with the business and data teams to define a proactive alerting framework that could detect and surface potential supply chain disruptions in real-time.
The most critical disruption scenarios included unexpected vehicle dwell times, transit delays, capacity constraints, potential bottlenecks at plants or distribution hubs, and holds placed on vehicles due to quality or compliance issues.
Once an alert was triggered, the system automatically aggregated affected vehicles into segments based on common characteristics like plant origin, vehicle series, or geographic region. This allowed Toyota teams to quickly identify systemic patterns and take targeted action.
Supply Pipeline displayed any measures treanding outside set thresholds for raising alerts.
Clicking into an alert displayed a breakdown of the measure over time.
Root causes displayed by segment aided teams in identifying potential causes for that measure’s alert.
Empowered Quality Compliance teams to initiate inspections, assess damage, manage hold status, and control downstream vehicle flow.
From the shared vehicle list, Quality Compliance starts a Hold Group for affected units.
Coordinated inspections and repairs across regional service teams based on damage severity.
Locating and drilling into specific vehicles was made easier through various views.
We worked closely with external dealer and distributor systems so that they could tap into the same data fabric and UI patterns, aligning external stakeholders (such as dealers and customer services) with Toyota’s internal operations.
Dealer Daily was used to manage individual dealer inventories and began leveraging a shared language with internal teams.
One platform, one story.
Demand & Supply Management Executive Sponsor, Toyota
Impact
- 99% reduction in time to retrieve aggregate vehicle records
- 80%+ ETA accuracy for vehicles in transit
- 20% reduction in status inquiries from dealers and internal teams
- Four product MVPs launched across 12 regions, backed by a growing user base
- Introduction of the Tess Design System, enabling consistent, scalable UX across the program
Teams moved from phone trees and email chains to shared views and coordinated actions. From damage inspection after a hailstorm to proactive dealer updates, Toyota teams now operate from a common platform and a common understanding.
This wasn’t just a systems transformation. It was an organizational one. Design didn’t just ship features, but it helped shape culture. It helped Toyota move from confusion to clarity, and from disjointed tools to shared intent.