ICL awarded Kaizen Award from Toyota Logistics Services for improvements to their Validation checks using automation tools

12.05.2022

Automotive

Logistics

We are proud to announce that we have been awarded a Kaizen Excellence Award from Toyota Logistics Services (TLS) for our collaboration on transportation software to improve their deployment process. This prestigious award is given to companies that embrace the Kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement during their 2022 Supplier Conference in Plano, TX.

On the announcement of the award, Reza Nasri, Director of Operations from ICL:

"Validation checks for new software code releases are time-consuming and costly, often requiring several resources across multiple teams. By automating many validations, ICL reduced the time spent on deployment validation activities by nearly 50%. We are honored to win a Kaizen award for a second consecutive year and look forward to continued collaboration with Toyota to improve our processes and solutions".

For this project, our goal was to reduce the total time to deploy and validate new code for the validation process to under 180 minutes. We achieved a 225-minute reduction in data processor validation time overall. Deployments are now 48% faster using this tool, leading to over 150 hours now being free to concentrate on other avenues.

Rudy Hernandez, Software Developer at ICL, explains below the process of building the automation tool and his input

"I looked for industry-standard automation testing libraries and settled on TestNG as it's the backbone for Selenium, another widely used automation tool for web screen testing. With Toyota's support and approval, we could implement the automation solution in UAT and production environments."

We are currently collaborating with internal teams to identify additional checks from the deployment checklist that can benefit the deployment process and develop automation tools TLS can use in other environments.

About ICL

ICL sets the benchmark in cloud-based product supply chain visibility and invoice auditing solutions. Only ICL's Vehicle Logistics Management System (VLMS) offers seamless integration with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and their logistics providers for end-to-end visibility, from production to dealer.

Learn more about ICL's products and services: https://iclsystems.com/en/products-and-services