Lineage Logistics
How we helped transform a massive network of warehousing data into actionable insights
As the world’s largest refrigerated warehousing company, Lineage Logistics occupies a central place in the food supply chain, supporting the storage and consumption of food across the globe. Their large footprint presented them with a challenge: how to leverage a complex set of operational, financial, labor, and safety data from across their warehouses to make informed business decisions; the types of decisions that get food to your table with as little waste as possible and help them adapt to the evolving needs of their customers and consumers.
Together, we launched metricsOne, a responsive web platform providing key performance indicators and actionable insights from their massive amounts of data. Our team of analysts, designers, and developers helped to identify and prioritize metrics for an initial MVP release and have significantly contributed to the platform’s development in the years since. Through metricsOne, Lineage is better able to react to a dynamic environment because they can quickly address challenges at an individual facility or rest assured knowing that the food product in storage is safe and accurate.
Today, metricsOne supports a range of teams, from finance to project management to new hires learning about the business, who can use the tool to learn about a facility before ever stepping foot through the door. The platform has become an indispensable tool within their organization.
”It’s been such a fruitful and productive relationship, and Lineage as a company wouldn’t be here without the support of Detroit Labs.”
Eric Ristow
VP Product Management, Lineage Logistics
System Architecture
metricsOne needed to handle a massive amount of data from various underlying systems. It also needed to remain performant and readily available as the dataset and use of the platform scaled with Lineage’s expansion. Our team jumped right in, helping drive architectural decisions and constantly seeking creative ways to improve performance while not sacrificing data availability.
UI/UX
With the technical architecture coming together, our team designed a data-oriented experience that the Lineage team could use to monitor and influence decisions affecting large areas of their business. We made it easy to isolate the operations and finances of individual warehouses, entire regions, or the business as a whole, and further filter the data using a variety of tools.
Design
In order to launch quickly and start learning the initial version of metricsOne was built using off-the-shelf React UI components. Our team then had the opportunity to design a system of purpose-built components and patterns to support the specific use-cases of the platform. The visual system we created — Klondike — established page layouts, chart types, accessible, data viz-friendly color palettes, and universal UI components to ensure a familiar experience across the platform.
Development
When we first engaged with Lineage, it was important to launch quickly and learn. Our development team quickly got to work building a custom data aggregation service and API along with the initial React frontend application. At launch, metricsOne provided insight into a handful of business metrics, but has since grown to include many more.
We’ve continuously iterated on the platform with Lineage since its launch, adding new reports, improving performance, and the internationalization of the application for users outside of the United States.
