iPad App: Warehouse Logistics Tracking and Improved Efficiency

"I’d especially recommend them to anyone in the startup world who may not have a fully-formed vision." Andrew Gillies, Product Development Head

About the app

This project is represented by the creation of an iPad app to handle processes for FishisFast, a global package forwarding service. The app is linked to a bluetooth barcode scanner and industrial scales and it's used both for receiving shipments and to ship stored items to customers.

Some features of the app include:

  • using a bluetooth barcode scanner to input codes from boxes;

  • using the iPad camera to take pictures of boxes and items that will later be stored on a server for the customers to see;

  • connect to a Rasberry Pi to get the weight from our custom scale system, which communicates with our mobile app;

  • utilizing OCR technology to recognize text from invoice pictures, significantly reducing manual data entry for cashiers.

Challenges

Our now 10-year partners came initially to us with just a bug in their previous system.

They were already using iPads in their warehouse, but the web app was not meeting their needs. It was slow and buggy, and it did not have all the functionality needed for them to conduct logistics properly.

FishisFast wanted an app that would be flexible and mobile. Their employees needed to be able to move around freely and use the app from anywhere in the warehouse.

Solutions

To solve the bug that the company was having with their web app, we developed a new prototype of the flow that was affected by the bug to remove it.

We continued our partnership with various features that would improve the efficiency of the warehouse's auto-sorting process. For example, the app allows workers to multipeer sort items. This involves sharing the same sorting flow between multiple devices that communicate with each other using multipeer technology, significantly speeding up the process.

The number of users of the iPad app varies from 40 to 100 employees at a time and it is used only internally by the company's warehouse workers. The app has improved the efficiency of their warehouse operations and reduced the amount of physical work that their workers need to do.

To ensure this project’s success, we chose to use:

  • VisionKit for OCR capabilities;

  • Combine for image processing;

  • SwiftUI for the app's user interface.

However, whenever new technology becomes available for iPadOS, we provide an overview to our partners on how it can be used to improve their flows.

For example, we proposed and created an Apple Business Manager so that the company could have a private app store. The latest feature that we are currently working on is adding external USB camera to the app to further increase productivity of the warehouse.

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