-90%
Product setup time
2011
+50%
Reducing order setup time by 90% through Service Design
Lead Designer at Actilum
Context
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About
Actilum is a Barcelona-based manufacturer of custom LED lighting, known for made-to-measure solutions and strong client relationships in the retail signage sector.
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Challenge
Rapid growth exposed internal inefficiencies: duplicated tasks, unclear roles, and disconnected tools led to production errors, delays, and rising client dissatisfaction.
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Impact
I led the creation of a unified internal platform that connected all departments through contextual workflows—cutting errors to nearly zero and eliminating overtime across teams.
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Team
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Demian Epsztein
Co-Founder
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Nicola Dimitrov
Co-Founder
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Josemi Rodríguez
Designer
- +14
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My tasks
- Design cross-functional workflows
- Map roles and responsibilities
- Build internal product tools
- Lead multi-team discovery workshops
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Timeline
January 2017 — January 2018
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Links
Prototype Documentation
Highlights
-99%
Sales-to-production errors
Live ERP access
Replaced printed documents
First internal MVP
Built from Agile mindset
Shared workflows
Connected all departments
Problem
Story time
It’s early 2017, and Actilum is no longer the small workshop it was just a few years ago. The company had gone from 8 to 35 employees and was now billing several million euros annually. Growth had been fast—and so were the problems catching up with it.
The founders called a meeting with all department heads. I was there as Head of Design. The message was clear: “We’re losing control. Too many errors, too many delays, and clients aren’t as happy as they used to be. We need a solution—and fast.”
I left the meeting with a sense of urgency and an idea. I proposed hosting a cross-department workshop where each lead could openly share what was breaking in their area. It wasn’t just about listing problems; it was about creating transparency and opening the door to collaboration.
The last piece to get buy-in
After the workshop, I met with my team to shape a plan. We knew this wasn’t just a tooling problem—it was a systems problem. We needed a process that worked across departments. But first, we needed to convince leadership we could lead this transformation from design.
We suggested tackling the problem gradually, focusing on one department at a time. We prioritized these through strategic workshops with leadership, starting with the sales department.
We also proposed applying Service Design principles to structure the work, combining two methodologies:
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Agile
To move quickly and respond to immediate issues -
Lean Manufacturing
To ensure continuous improvement driven by the people doing the work
Impact-Effort Matrix
…And we’ve got a green light!
With the leadership on board, we got to work. We began by interviewing people from the sales team, but it quickly became clear we needed to expand our research across all departments. We couldn’t understand why commercial staff were spending time adding manually the price list to each product in the ERP, testing product viability, or validating shipments—tasks clearly outside their scope. What we uncovered was a web of disconnections that had normalized over time. To fix the system, we first had to understand it.
Solution
From isolated fixes to system-level thinking
As we interviewed the sales team, it became clear that solving one area wasn’t enough. The real problem was between areas—specifically, the friction and disconnect in the handoff from sales to production. The most time-consuming and error-prone flow was what we came to call "order creation." That’s where we needed to begin.
We spent several days shadowing production and interviewing staff. The deeper issue was cultural: lack of transparency had created a lack of trust. Sales didn’t understand product limitations, and production didn’t understand the "why" behind what they were building. There was no shared language, and no shared context.
We framed the opportunity through three questions:
- How might we reduce configuration errors without relying on manual validation?
- How might we make communication transparent across teams?
- How might we empower every employee with the right context?
Designing the Product Builder Workflow
To improve communication and reduce costly errors, we redesigned the workflow between the sales and production departments. The goal was to ensure each team operated with clarity, responsibility, and shared context.
This new workflow became the foundation for a cross-functional system, aligning expectations between departments while increasing speed, accuracy, and trust.
We focused on:
- Reducing steps and ambiguity in the order creation process
- Making product configurations transparent and technically feasible from the start
- Structuring ownership through well-defined roles and documentation
- Shifting the validation process from manual review to proactive prevention via tooling
- Establishing a workflow language to replace informal workarounds
Product creation workflow (Before/After)
MVP Features
We built an Excel-based MVP called Product Builder, which served as a powerful internal tool for product configuration and production alignment. It allowed sales teams to create products step-by-step while preventing invalid combinations based on rules defined by production and R&D.
We also automated the creation of production sheets directly from the configuration, ensuring each production team received exactly what they needed, with added context about the order.
Key features included:
- Full product configuration with real-time validations
- 250+ controlled error checks for production feasibility
- 100+ optimization tips for more efficient builds
- Real-time price calculation
- Automated generation of production sheets
- Custom production labels per item
- Direct ERP import with full bill of materials (BOM)
- Updated cost calculations for materials (manual input)
- Final product weight, dimensions, and consumption estimates (±5% accuracy)
- Discount and currency conversion logic
Excel MVP
From MVP to internal platform
The MVP was a success. Product creation time dropped from 10 minutes to less than 1. Order creation was 7 minutes faster on average, thanks to clearer rules and real-time guidance.
The next priorities: enable datasheet generation, connect the builder to the ERP for live pricing and stock visibility, and centralize the experience into a web-based tool.
Migrating the Product Builder to a secure internal web app allowed us to:
- Make it accessible outside the office
- Replace printed production sheets with digital access from tablets on the shop floor
- Improve syncing with the ERP and eliminate version-control issues
Visual language
Using an atomic design system approach we decided to not reinvent the wheel in order to create our own UI elements. For the visual style, we aligned on the blend of Moon Design System tokens.
Conclusion
From internal alignment to customer trust
Standardizing internal workflows and eliminating guesswork between departments didn’t just improve operational efficiency — it restored client trust.
Before this project, miscommunications and production errors were visible at the very end of the chain: the client. Orders arrived late, incomplete, or incorrect, and frustration built over time. But by streamlining how teams collaborated and making processes transparent, we shifted the impact upstream — solving problems before they reached the customer.
The results were clear:
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) rose from -10 to +42
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) improved from 3,4 to 4,7
- Operational clarity became customer clarity