# Automation Hub, Robotics & Digital Twin By Semyon Kuznetsov · Web version: https://semyonkuznetsov.com/projects/robotics-automation-hub.html *Note: The project is under NDA, so unfortunately I can't share more details.* The Automation Hub is the program's home page, branching into eight areas a level below it. Two of those are platforms in their own right: Robotics, for what the organization already owns, and Digital Twin, for what is being delivered right now. Automation in manufacturing operations — robots and vision systems on the production floor, software automation in the processes around them — commissioned site by site, across more than one region. 1. Top 5 global pharma, revenue ~$50B 2. Markets in 155 countries 3. Enterprise UX for Business Services, streamlined processes in clinical trials & operations | | | | --- | --- | | Domain | Pharmaceuticals | | Role | Senior Product Designer | | Team | Designer, PM, Engineering team, Data Owner | | Timeline | May 2026 — Aug 2026 | ## Problem The client's operations automation program covers robotics, process automation, agentic AI, and AI enablement. Each area had its own teams, materials, and audience, but there was no shared entry point. Solutions that already existed were hard to find for the teams that could have reused them. An earlier attempt did not meet the quality the business expected. The project restarted from scratch: new structure, new content model, new design. Two constraints shaped the rest: delivery on SharePoint, and the client's new enterprise design system. ## Goal - One home for the automation program, branching cleanly into its pillars - A robotics portfolio that can be browsed, compared and understood without having to ask anyone - Materials from many contributing teams in one navigable system instead of scattered across them - A delivery view where a use case, the risks against it and the decision it is waiting on sit in one record instead of a spreadsheet ## What I Did End-to-end design of the hub and the two platforms nested inside it, from information architecture through interactive prototype to post-launch support. ### Discovery & information architecture - **Worked from the source data:** multiple sets of tables describing solutions, attributes and ownership, turned into a content model - **Ran working sessions** with team members and content owners across the automation program - **Iterated the architecture to version five** before the structure was agreed - **Documented it properly:** three navigation levels, every page with its filters and fields, primary navigation separated from cross-links, and a legend — the IA became the reference the whole team worked from ### Automation Hub - **Eight areas a level below the home page:** tools and reporting, functions, business processes, sites, an AI fluency track, the process automation hub, and the two platforms — all entries in the same navigation, so the program reads as one system rather than a set of linked microsites - **One template, many workstreams:** a repeatable page structure — intro, capability cards, key benefits, materials, updates, contacts — so new areas could be added without new design - **Landing pages for the program:** updates, governance, session schedules, go-lives, resource libraries, a contact directory mapped to workstreams, and an AI fluency area with foundational sessions, hands-on sessions and a training kit - **One pattern across the tools:** the tools section is a single module — tool card, training materials, access request — repeated across four tools - **The process automation area** with six sub-areas, one of them deep enough to need its own about, playbook and roadmap pages ### Robotics A platform in its own right, nested a level below the hub: what automation the organization already owns, and who runs it. - **Search the way people actually search:** by platform, by work center, by status, with filter chips and dedicated states for default, selection and filtered results - **A defined record, agreed with the data owner:** platform, work center, status, evaluation type, framework agreement, lead site, lead time, supported regions, partner tiers, cost per unit, tags and owner contacts - **Objects that link to each other:** partners, framework agreements and running projects were designed to reach each other, so a technology leads to its supplier, its contract and its live deployments without leaving the hub - **An AI assistant over the same data:** natural-language querying and cross-section search, surfaced as a Teams bot on the organization's existing assistant platform - Plus a dashboard layer, a knowledge base explaining how the catalog works, a feedback system with its own lifecycle, and export and version control for records reused outside the hub ### Digital Twin The second platform at that level. Where Robotics answers what already exists, this one answers what is being delivered right now — Digital Twin and Computer Vision use cases across manufacturing platforms and sites, and what is blocking them. It replaced a load sheet: one row per use case, thirty-seven columns, dropdown reference values on one tab and a data dictionary on another. It worked as a collection format and failed as a working tool — risks and issues lived apart from the use cases they threatened, status was retyped for every leadership readout, and RAG colors were typed by hand instead of following from anything. - **Two objects and one link between them:** a use case and a RAID item are separate records joined many-to-many, linkable from either side — the use case lists its RAID items by severity, the register lists the use cases each item holds up - **A record built from the load sheet, not from scratch:** the same fields the spreadsheet collected, regrouped into four blocks — identification, delivery, narrative, status — in the order people actually read them - **A shared vocabulary, defined in the product:** eight lifecycle stages, three severity levels and a five-step scalability ladder, each with its definition carried in the interface as a tooltip, so *reusable at other sites* means the same thing to everyone filling the form - **Status that follows from evidence:** RAG stops being a field someone types and becomes a consequence of the linked RAID items, so a red risk cannot sit next to a green use case - **A leadership view that is a filter, not a report:** four counters, then only the items that need a person — owner, severity, due date. *Decision required* and *escalation required* are flags on the RAID item itself, so an escalation is a state of the record rather than an email - **Two ways into the same data:** a register that sorts, filters and expands rows in place, and a portfolio of cards for browsing by platform, site, stage and scalability — neither losing your position in the list **What it changes:** status, blockers, owners and decisions sit on the record instead of being reassembled for each meeting; a risk is attached to what it threatens, so a cross-site dependency shows up on every use case it holds up; and leadership reads the same data everyone else edits, because the summary is a view rather than a separate deck. ### Handoff & post-launch support - **Documented the states for engineering:** component variants, interaction states, breadcrumbs, cursor behavior and search states, rather than leaving them to be inferred - **Worked through implementation:** regular review calls with the frontend team, ~100 issue items tracked and closed one by one - **Continued after launch** with design review and ongoing support ## Results - **Nobody has to ask an owner any more:** the catalog replaced a set of tables only their owners knew about, so a team can see what the organization already runs before commissioning something new. - **Content teams publish without a designer:** repeatable modules mean new landing pages, tool entries and catalog records fit the system by default. - **Structure survived the handoff:** the build matched the design and the issues I raised got closed rather than absorbed — four months from restart to launch, across more than 45 screens. --- [All projects](https://semyonkuznetsov.com/index.md) · Next case: [Supply Chain Platform](https://semyonkuznetsov.com/projects/pharma-supply-chain.md)