Overview

Documentation

Module for demonstrating the refill use-cases in the manufacturing domain

Description

In the manufacturing industry, there are multiple occasions when a consumable good needs to be replaced. The consumable is typically “used” by a machine, think “printer and ink”. Usually the consumable needs to fit to the machine otherwise the machine can suffer severe damage, e.g. wrong filament for a 3D printer. Hence supporting the refill process with an app helps to mitigate the risk of refilling with unsuitable consumables and thus minimises the consequential damages and remedial costs. The module supports the machine service by letting the technician scan both, the machine and the consumable and it checks in the database, whether those two components fit to each other. The check result is displayed in the app and only then can the technician refill the consumable and update the status.

This module provides a basic structure with pages, microflows and a suitable domain model to implement such a use-case, either in a demonstrator or in a PoC. It can also serve as a basis for a productive app.

Typical usage scenario

If you are tasked to implement an app to support a refill use-cases, you can use this module which gets you up to speed with the basic functionality. It sports a data administration view to configure the machine with the corresponding consumables and it provides basic native mobile pages allowing the user to scan both, machine and consumable to determine if the two are compatible. Finally, the user can confirm the refill activity inside the app to document the successful work.

Features and limitations

• Responsive web view to administer machine and consumable data incl. compatibilities
• native mobile pages with integrated barcode scanner and result display
• displaying barcodes on the responsive web pages to test and showcase the app

Dependencies

• Native Mobile Resources
• Barcode widget
• Mendix Studio Pro from 8.18 is tested and supported; other version may work but were not tested yet.

Configuration

1. After you imported this module (.mpk) to your project you will likely see multiple errors (“Navigating to a native page...”), this is normal and can easily be solved by adding a “Native mobile” profile as new navigation profile.
2. Now that we have solved that, we need to set a native mobile homepage (choose “ RefillAssignments_Native”) and also add that page as new bottom bar icon. Now all errors should be gone. (Also check the screenshots here.)
3. Use a start page, like 'Automotive_Web' or your own to open the use-case specific pages.
4. Go to the 'Admin' tab on the page 'Refill_Web' and create master data for machines and consumables.
5. Open the app on a smartphone through the 'MakeItnative'-App.
6. On the desktop, go to the tab 'Demonstration' on page 'Refill_Web' to display the barcodes for machines and consumables.
7. Scan the barcodes with your native app. If the consumable fits the machine, the status 'feasible' will be set, if not 'rejected'.
8. The new refill assignment appears on your smartphones start page ('RefillAssignments_Native') and you can either cancel or complete it through a swipe gesture. Completed means, you completed the refill work.
9. You can see the data changing on the web app
10. You can also demonstrate the offline-capability of the native mobile by switching on flight mode.
11. Have fun!

For questions, please refer to tim.herden@mendix.com