Case study
FarmBridge
Receiving, inventory, processing, shipping, and floor automation for a packing and shipping operation.
The customer is not named. Details that would identify them are left out. What remains is the operational problem, the software, and the result.
The operation
A grower, grader, and shipper handling inbound lots from fields and other growers, then inventory, processing, and outbound loads. Settlement with growers, position with customers, and what is actually sitting in a cooler have to agree.
Buyers and inspectors ask one-step-back and one-step-forward questions. The dock has scales, cameras, and label printers. Forklift operators move marked containers. The office needs live quantity, age, and location, not a week-old spreadsheet.
An earlier load-tracking tool already existed for outbound paperwork. It did not cover receiving through inventory, it was not built as a secure modern platform, and it could not let the operation change floor process without another software project.
What was broken
The product trail was a stack of clipboards.
- Intake captured weight, container counts, grower, and quality in ways that did not stay with the lot once it left the scale.
- Inventory was a walk-around. “Where is that bin?” meant asking whoever last saw it.
- Processing steps (grading, packing, and other handling) broke the identity of what went into a load.
- Shipping paperwork and the cooler did not share a source of truth. Underload, overload, and which cargo is on this trailer were tribal knowledge.
- Grower settlement used numbers that might not match what receiving stored. Customer position used numbers that might not match what shipped.
- Floor hardware (scale, camera, printer) was not part of the same workflow as the record. Photos for a dispute lived on a phone. Labels were a separate job.
- When the packing shed changed how a job ran, the answer was a custom code change. There was no way for the operation to author “scan the cooler first, then scan bins” without calling a developer for every sequence.
What we built
FarmBridge: one record from the field to the customer’s dock, plus an automation layer so the operation can author how floor work runs.
Core operations (web)
- Organizations, products, contracts, plantings, lots, facilities, and containers as first-class records.
- Receiving that captures who it came from, how much (weight, volume, or container count), and timestamped photos when cameras are in the flow.
- Inventory as facility location: a container’s place is the cooler, dock, or line it is in. Nested containers stay a hierarchy, not a guess.
- Processing that keeps identity with the product so a load can still answer what went in.
- Shipping from the same trail: allocate containers to a load, move them, and keep the ledger so reports and traceability match the floor.
- Grower payments from stored lot measures, not from a side spreadsheet.
- Live reporting: floor and office share quantity, age, and location.
Floor and hardware
- Handheld scanner app and QR short links so an operator starts at the destination (scan the dock or the cooler first), then scans each container.
- Connected equipment: scales, cameras, printers, and room to attach other devices through an on-site gateway.
- Labels and lot photos attached to the same lot the office sees.
Automation (so the software does not go stale)
- The operation (or we, during commissioning) authors flows: receiving intake, location moves, load-out, unload, print, notify.
- Operators see the screen the designer authored. When the shed changes how a job runs, the flow is edited and published. That is configuration, not a rewrite of the core product.
- Logic that is policy (tare, expected range, yield) lives in helpers the client owns. Core software stores measures and displays what was stored. It does not silently apply one farm’s formula to every farm.
Platform shape
- Permission-gated web app, with a path to replace the older load-tracking surface over time rather than a risky overnight cutover.
- Companion Android scanner. Each client gets their own installation, hosted in the country they choose, or on-prem. Floor capture can still run on site.
What changed
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Clipboards and exports that aged the moment they were saved | One lot record from intake through shipping |
| “Where is that bin?” as a walk-around | Location, age, and quantity on screen |
| Disputes from memory and phone photos | Scale weights and timestamped photos on the lot |
| Shipping and inventory as two stories | Load-out is a move plus an allocation on the same trail |
| Every SOP change needed custom code | Floor sequences authored in automation, then published |
| Traceability assembled after the fact | One-step-back and one-step-forward from the product trail |
Operators still drive forklifts. The office still settles growers and customers. They are no longer reconciling three versions of the truth.