Wire Pulse is a real time inventory management system for wire distributors. When combined with a proprietary reel sensor, it allows for an order to be tracked through every step of the process.

• Order is placed
• Order is assigned
• Cut is started
• Cut is completed
• Order is finalized

As each step is completed, both the in-house inventory and deliverable reel are updated with their length and status.

The fun part about this project was that it was entirely about functionality. We needed to show wire distributors that we could help them save time and money, so flashy graphics weren't necessary.

One of the challenging parts of this project was determining what the workflow looked like. It took time, planning, and experimentation to determine which data points I really wanted to highlight. Ultimately, I kept it simple; instead of bar charts or graphs, I decided to lean heavily on tables to track inventory and employee productivity.

The most important metric was the employee cycle time. Wire Pulse captures and stores a time stamp for every step in the process; with a few PHP functions and formatting, it's easy to track the amount of time it takes each employee to complete every step of the process.

The Data Tables js plugin really comes through here. The search box is incredibly powerful, allowing users to quickly find any type of wire they are looking for. Exporting any table as a CSV file also has real practical value.

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Data Tables!

Data structure took some consideration. It took thought to find a good way to design each table. From there, the biggest consideration was thinking through all possibilities. If a defect was reported in the middle of a cut, for example, both the source reel and destination reel would need to have their lengths updated.

In hindsight, the data structure could have been better. As the project grew in scope, I found the simplest solution to our expanding data needs was to simply add new columns to the primary table tracking the orders. This got the job done, but it wasn't easy to manage. Select All commands were entirely unrealistic, and need to be replaced by queries asking for specific column values.

The second major mistake relates to the Place Order screen. This is a dynamic screen- the user is able to add cuts to each order, as well as wires to each cut. I did this in classic Javascript, and it resulted in some redundancy. This is why modern frameworks (angular, react) were invented!

More Work