Lowe's - 1-Click Receiving

Company

Lowe's Associate Mobility

Role(s)

UX Designer
Prototype Building
Design Strategy
App Flow Design
Product Design

Summary

Lowe’s relies on Good Faith vendors to accurately ship the items they’ve ordered and to properly document any missing or delayed products. This trusted partnership allows the receiving process to move quickly and efficiently, minimizing manual checks and helping associates get merchandise onto the sales floor faster.

Background

1-Click Receiving: Reduced receiving to < 1 minute.

The modernized Lowe’s Detailed Receiving Process reduced receiving time from 45 minutes to just 10 minutes per shipment. By streamlining the app to allow a single scan and quick quantity entry, associates could process deliveries faster and boost productivity. However, we knew this process could be simplified even further, and with additional work, we could make most of it disappear entirely for trusted supplier shipments.

Building on that success, we created 1-Click Receiving to remove counts entirely for trusted suppliers. Working with associates, managers, and cross-functional teams, we streamlined workflows and designed a faster, more intuitive experience that reduced the process to under one minute.

Problem Statement

Lowe’s needed to modernize its receiving process to facilitate faster, more efficient receiving.

In Good Faith Receiving, Lowe’s trusted many suppliers to ship exactly what was ordered. Or, at least to have our bill of lading accurately report what was shipped.

Instead of scanning every case or item, associates could scan the bill of lading and accept the shipment as fulfilled based on the manifest. While periodic audits confirmed accuracy, the goal was to make receiving a truck feel more like a handshake—fast, simple, and built on trust. Lowe’s needed to streamline this process without disrupting store operations, reduce manual effort, and improve overall receiving efficiency across trusted supplier relationships.

Mapping the Decisions

We quickly mapped where lot code capture was required and proposed adding an item-level flag to trigger capture in our third-party platform. Before building solutions on our side, we aligned with their stakeholders to ensure the platform could recognize and respond to this flag.

Research & Workshops

Data Flow Diagram - Simplified Version

After reviewing the documentation from our third-party partner, I facilitated several workshops with our architects and product managers to map the data flow between both sides, determining how lot and batch codes would be submitted, stored, and retrieved.

The resulting data flow diagram became a shared reference point, aligning business and technical requirements, clarifying how third-party systems exchanged and stored the data, and providing a single source of truth for both developers and QA. By visualizing the process, we reduced confusion, accelerated solution design, and ensured FDA traceability standards could be met without disrupting fulfillment operations.

Receiving Journey

At a high level, we reviewed the entire receiving process to identify opportunities for capturing key data elements. From this analysis, I pinpointed the optimal points in the workflow to capture lot and batch codes in order to meet FDA traceability requirements.

Service Blueprint

I led our team to expand the receiving journey into a preliminary blueprint, mapping out each step to highlight where lot and batch code capture could be integrated for FDA traceability.