Automating Warehouse Management with a Mobile Barcode Scanner App

Summary

If done manually, warehousing activities—such as checking delivered goods with invoices and checklists—are not only time consuming but also prone to human error. The mobile barcode scanner eliminates the inaccuracies that occur when data is entered into the database by automating the registration of incoming goods and their IDs. The Android application is integrated into the customer’s ERP system and helps employees to easily register arriving goods, track the stock, process orders, etc.

The need

The customer, a Sweden-based software vendor, develops applications that employ modern mobile technologies to enhance logistics and retail services. One of their main requirements was to combine rich functionality with simplicity in an app for efficient warehouse management.

The challenges

Under the project, the team at Altoros had to address the following issues:

• Since the project requirements were regularly updated according to end-user feedback, the team had to be flexible, working on the project according to a methodology that allows for alterations at any stage of the development cycle.
• The application had to provide a lot of features for warehouse management. However, the abundance of functions made navigation through the system too complicated, which affected user experience.

The solution

The team decided to use the Agile methodology, so that the customer could track progress, test new features, and introduce changes to the project. Much attention was paid to the user interface. All the features were grouped to provide access to the required functions.

Since some of the features required a PIN, which was stored on the server, the team had to solve the issue with server updates. A custom script was created to automatically update server settings while keeping the same password. Each time a new build of the project is released, it is uploaded to the customer’s website. To get a new version of the application, users only need to press the update button.

The outcome

The application makes it possible to check inventory in real time and considerably speeds up warehouse management.