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Surendar Selvaraj.
DPDHL IoT Platform admin overview

[ Case study ]

DPDHL IoT Platform

The Deutsche Post DHL Group IoT platform is one governed home for connected operations, where applications, devices, users, and business units are onboarded and run together rather than as a tool per use case. Its architecture rests on five core entities and a role-based access model, so the same platform serves many teams, from Warehouse Operations Intelligence to CONNECT, without fragmenting.

Client
Deutsche Post DHL Group
Role
Lead UX Architect · via Wipro
Year
2019
Disciplines
Enterprise UX, Platform Design, Design Systems, Dashboard Design, IoT

5

Core entities: business unit, application, device, user, association

Many

IoT applications hosted, from WOI to CONNECT

RBAC

Role-based governance across the whole platform

[ Information architecture ]

01

Business units

  • Tenancy
  • Hierarchy
02

Applications

  • Catalog
  • Configuration
03

Devices

  • Registry
  • Telemetry
04

Users

  • Profiles
  • Roles
05

Associations

  • Links between entities

The DPDHL IoT Platform is Deutsche Post DHL Group's home for connected operations - a single, governed place to onboard and run the IoT applications, devices, users, and business units behind DHL's use cases, from Warehouse Operations Intelligence to CONNECT. I led the UX architecture for the platform and its modules.

Platform admin overview with user and device distribution
The platform overview: live user and device counts, distribution analytics, and the owners behind every connected application.

One platform, many applications

DHL was building IoT applications across the business, each with its own devices, owners, and users. Rather than a tool per use case, the platform provides one consistent home: applications are onboarded, devices registered and associated, users provisioned with roles, and everything monitored from shared dashboards.

Platform dashboard with entity counts and distribution charts
Shared dashboards give administrators a live read on users, devices, and the applications they power.

A model built on core entities

The information architecture is organised around five core entities - Business Unit, Application, Device, User, and Association - each with its own onboarding flow, all governed by a role-based access model. That structure is what lets the same platform serve many teams without fragmenting.

  • Business Units model DHL's organisational hierarchy
  • Applications are catalogued, owned, and launched from one place
  • Devices are onboarded, configured, and associated with applications
  • Users are provisioned with roles, responsibilities, and business units
  • RBAC governs who can do what, per platform and per application
Warehouse Operations Intelligence, one application on the platform
Applications like Warehouse Operations Intelligence run on top of the shared platform.
The hard part of an enterprise IoT platform is not any one screen - it is making onboarding, governance, and monitoring feel like one coherent system across every device, app, and team.

Outcome

  • One governed platform replaced a tool-per-use-case sprawl
  • Shared onboarding, dashboards, and a role model scaled across applications
  • A consistent DHL design language unified every module
[ Next project ]DHL IoT: Admin Dashboard