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Case 02 / 05 Platform + mobile · SCM Group

SCM Digital Portal

A wall of raw numbers, rebuilt into a tool that says what to do next.

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Live platform Not public

Fig. 0 · SCM Digital Portal · product walkthrough

Rebuilt SCM Group’s plant-management platform, the industrial IoT layer over its machines, from a wall of raw numbers into a tool woodworking professionals actually run their shops with, then put it in their pocket. 30,000 users on more than 100,000 machines, in 40+ countries.

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Context

SCM Group builds the machines that cut, shape and finish wood at industrial scale. SCM Digital Portal is the plant-management platform on top of them: the industrial IoT layer, fed by the PLC on every machine, that tells a shop what its machines are doing and what needs attention. It had grown feature-first: it showed data faithfully and explained almost nothing.

SCM’s digital services stand at a trade fair — a visitor at a large monitor running the SCM Digital Portal, an SCM engineer beside him
FIG. 02.1 · The platform SCM sells alongside its machines, at the fair

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Problem

Accurate, and impossible to act on. Every screen was right and none said what to do next, so the judgement fell to the operator mid-shift. My job, leading the design team, was to reframe the product around decisions rather than data: what does this person need to know, right now, to keep the shop moving?

SCM Digital Portal rebuilt — the day’s tasks and the scheduled maintenance procedure lead, with productivity and energy read as two dials and machine, ticket and order states as one stacked summary
SCM Digital Portal as inherited — five machine-count tiles across the top, then every machine in the plant as an identical row: name, serial, status, and a day-long activity strip, each one carrying the same weight as the next
FIG. 02.2 · SCM Digital Portal · before / after · data without meaning

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Process

We worked from the floor up. With service engineers, shop owners and SCM’s product team we mapped the questions people bring to the screen (alarms, maintenance, throughput) and built one design system that scales from a single machine to a whole plant.

SCM Digital Portal, plant overview — every cell of the plant as a card with its state, the day’s tasks and shortcuts on the left, productivity and energy as two dials on the right
FIG. 02.3 · The plant first: every cell and its state, with the day’s tasks beside it
SCM Digital Portal, overview with a scheduled maintenance procedure open — the maintenance calendar on the left, the procedure step by step with the part to act on rendered on the machine
FIG. 02.4 · What is coming at you: a scheduled procedure, step by step, on the part it concerns
SCM Digital Portal, machine detail in alarm — current program, counters, the maintenance report and usage time on the left, the machine rendered on the right with its alarms called out on the parts that raised them
FIG. 02.5 · One machine in alarm: each fault named on the part that raised it

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Mobile

Not the desktop shrunk down. The people who run a shop are rarely at a desk. As the sole designer on it, I built the companion from a blank canvas around the moments that pull someone to their phone: a maintenance date, a ticket changing state, production drifting from plan.

The SCM Digital Portal companion on a phone held on the factory floor, showing a machine at 93% productivity, with machines and a worker blurred behind it
FIG. 02.6 · On the floor, next to the machine it reads
Companion app, machines — connected machines, pieces produced and availability as three dials over the list of cells, each with its productivity
Companion app, a cell’s shift history — shift status as a ring, then each shift’s part count against its goal
Companion app, tickets — pending, in progress and resolved, each ticket with its reference, attachments and severity
FIG. 02.7 · Machines, shifts, tickets: one-handed, one decision per screen
Companion app, ticket summary — severity and status as two rings over the ticket list
Companion app, maintenance analytics — average delay to scheduled and to deadline, activity status and the distribution of maintenance types
Companion app, a maintenance intervention — schedule, assignee, component, device, model and position on the machine
FIG. 02.8 · Maintenance: what slipped, who has it, where on the machine

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Outcome

From a data readout to a working tool. Rolled out in six months, and now run by 30,000 active users on more than 100,000 machines in over 40 countries, about 12,000 of them every weekday. A serious machine-down fault used to wait anywhere from a couple of days to two weeks for action, depending on the fault; it now reaches action in three days on average.

And the design system holds. The Portal is now SCM’s main IoT touchpoint, with more applications connecting to it, and the interface has not drifted apart.

The SCM Digital Portal on a large touchscreen in a plant office — a machine’s part count by shift, with a hand pointing at the chart
FIG. 02.9 · In the office: a machine’s output, shift by shift

Version history What was tried first

What it could have been

The finished screens argue for themselves. These are the forks: what was tried first, and what replaced it.

  1. Fork 01

    A better dashboard, or a different product?

    v1Rejected

    A clearer wall of numbers and, honestly, a whole intermediate application, which is what sat between the two screens above. The before/after is a two-year arc in one wipe.

    v2Shipped

    A companion for the production day, not a readout of it. Once the product helps with each step of a shift, the data stops being the subject and becomes the means. The visual change is a consequence.

  2. Fork 02

    What does the platform show you first?

    v1Rejected

    The machine list: the obvious opening screen for a fleet product, and the one everyone expected.

    v2Shipped

    What is coming at you. A list puts you above the plant, scanning; the people using this are inside it. I argued this hard and won it, the one fight in this project I would call decisive.

  3. Fork 03

    How does a tooling value survive changing units?

    v1Rejected

    Converting the number and trusting it to read. Across 40+ countries, a figure does not travel intact.

    v2Shipped

    Drawing the state. Knife sharpness is legible in millimetres and hard to judge in inches; an infographic makes the problem obvious in any unit.

Signed off SCM Group

Product Owner SCM Digital Portal, SCM Group

The introduction of the design department in the workflow not only improved the quality of the UI coming from the development side, but increased the reliability of the Quality Assurance testers. […] The digital portal speaks for itself, the platform has been completely turned around from a machine monitor to a plant companion, thanks to the choices and decisions made by the team after the key insights brought by the UX analysis conducted by Mr. Favaro. […] The portal is now the main IoT touchpoint for SCM with many more applications connecting to it in the future.

Email, September 2026

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