Manufacturing Inventory Platform Rebuild
Rebuilt The manufacturing client's inventory tooling from a rigid monolith to Flutter clients over Express/MongoDB, with Node-RED/OPC UA bridging Siemens and Delta PLC telemetry into the same operational picture.
Flutter (mobile + web)
Client
[High Confidence]
OPC UA via Node-RED into Express
Telemetry
[High Confidence]
What it does
The manufacturing client’s older inventory stack needed schema migrations for new product attributes. Floor operators typed counts by hand. PLC telemetry stayed on the factory network, so plant managers could not see machine state next to stock.
The rebuild uses document collections for flexible item attributes, one Flutter codebase for handheld and web, and a Node-RED + OPC UA bridge that streams controller events into the API.
Constraints
- Item attributes vary widely — avoid constant relational migrations
- Operators need phones; managers need dashboards
- Siemens/Delta gear speaks OPC UA / Modbus on isolated networks
- Warehouse Wi-Fi drops — clients need offline-tolerant behavior
Decisions & tradeoffs
- Express + MongoDB for flexible inventory documents
- Flutter for shared mobile/web UI
- Node-RED OPC UA adapter so industrial protocols stay out of core business handlers
- Lightweight image classification to help intake match part photos to catalog items
flowchart LR
Operators[Mobile and Web Clients] --> ExpressAPI[Express API]
ExpressAPI --> MongoDB[(MongoDB)]
ExpressAPI --> Classification[Image Categorization]
IndustrialPLC[Siemens / Delta PLCs] --> NodeRED[Node-RED Adapter]
NodeRED --> OPCUA[OPC UA Event Stream]
OPCUA --> ExpressAPITradeoffs: documents add attribute flexibility and push concurrency/validation into the app layer. An edge bridge adds a hop and keeps PLC protocol noise out of the API.
What it demonstrates
- Migrating a manufacturing ops tool without pretending factory networks are the cloud
- Cross-platform client consolidation
- Bridging OT telemetry into a product inventory model