Whirlpool Corporation manufactures a full line of home appliances, under such brand names as Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Brastemp, Bauknecht, and Consul. Based in Benton Harbor, MI, Whirlpool Corporation maintains manufacturing and distribution facilities worldwide, employing more than 68,000 people in the design, manufacture, and distribution of its products. Members of the design team depend on FileMaker Pro 7 to organize an essential element of their work.

Business Challenge

From refrigerators, freezers, ranges, and dishwashers to convenient, labor saving handheld and tabletop appliances, Whirlpool products are famous world over for their efficient, attractive, user–friendly design. However, before those products find their way to the consumer, a staff of industrial design experts and usability specialists supervises every step of the design process to ensure they are both ergonomic and attractive. "We have several labs in our Global Consumer Design department, including our Stylemaster Lab, our 3D Prototype Lab, our Usability Lab, and our Color Trends Lab," explains technical analyst Matt McCubbins. "Each of these labs takes requests from the industrial designers and usability specialists within our department for services such as the creation of artwork or prototype models, reservation of lab time, and studies of future color trends."

With a constant stream of lab requests from the various designers coming in via written requisitions or email, the department realized a more efficient system was needed to prevent errors and scheduling conflicts. "Since one of our labs had successfully been using FileMaker Pro since 1995," Matt continues, "we decided to update to the latest version and expand our usage to include the web–enabled access of FileMaker Pro 7.

Successful Solution

Whirlpool designers use a system of 15 FileMaker Pro 7 databases, containing approximately 7500 records, and now process incoming lab requests via the web. "We simply created user–friendly database layouts within FileMaker Pro 7, and let the Instant Web Publishing tool translate these layouts into an easy–to–use browser interface," relates Matt. "We then placed links to the web–based request system on our department's web page."

Four workgroups take advantage of this system, along with a dozen client users, and some 80 department staffers who use the web interface to submit their lab requests. These requests can include such variables as information about the person submitting the request as well as the specific nature of the request and the lab procedures that will be used to complete the request. As the information comes in from the web interface, lab staff monitor and process the requests using the FileMaker Pro client.

After just one month of using FileMaker Pro 7 our labs have already realized improvements in our processes, such as reduced data redundancies, increased accuracy of data, and greater efficiencies in the transfer of job requests between the labs and their customers. Also, our lab managers can now create comprehensive reports on the data captured by FileMaker Pro — reports which help the department to better understand and manage our lab resources.

— Matt McCubbins, Technical Analyst, Whirlpool Corporation