Order Management Tool für 3D-Druck Dienstleistungen

When a startup is founded, the focus is
usually put on getting orders instead of implementing
an adequate order management solution.
As the startup grows in orders and employees, the
initial make-do solution may become insufficient and
slow the business down in the long run. This was the
case for our partners Change 3D, who provide
various services in the 3D-printing environment. Their
make-do solution consisted of printing out cards for
each order. The printed cards were then filled in with
details such as order number, title, and client name,
and ultimately hung on a whiteboard.
As their business grew, the whiteboard became too
full, making it more difficult to find orders and keep up
with deadlines. This challenge led to the realization
that a new solution is needed.

To solve the problems and
alleviate the pain points of our partner, we set out to
develop a tool that displays their orders on a kanban
board. In close collaboration with our partners, we
followed the principles of user-centered design that
enforces an iterative process and focuses on an
understanding of the users and their context in all
stages. This enabled us to gain a deep understanding
of their problem and allowed us to build an application
tailored to their needs. Through a scheduler, written
as a microservice in Kotlin, we integrated their Bexio
where we fetch the orders from, to eliminate the
necessity of manually creating an item for the board.
The core of the application is a backend written in
Kotlin, which receives the orders from the scheduler
and stores them in a MongoDB. Additionally, the
states and state transitions are managed in the
backend, which automatically triggers actions on
Bexio, further eliminating manual steps of the
previous process. The frontend is written in Angular,
communicating with the backend through a RESTful
API, which allows for live updating using SSE.

The result provides a substantive
improvement for the day-to-day business and order
management of our partner, as determined by user
tests. The core functionality is the board, which
responsively displays the items in columns
representing the states. Through drag and drop, an
item can be moved into another state, which triggers
the applicable action on Bexio. To improve the
usability of the board and make it more practical for
more use cases, there are various view options
implemented, such as sorting, filtering, and grouping
the items. On top of that, what is shown on each card
is configurable and pieces of information can be
hidden to further remove clutter from the board.
Additional information can be stored and found on the
detailed view of each card, such as assigning the item
to someone, the history of the item, or an interactive
3D render of the piece that is being produced. After
an item has gone through all the steps and the order
is completed, it can be moved into the archive, which
provides an insight into the orders that were
completed across a timeline.