FruitCheck
Services
Concept, Design, Development Android/Backend/Webfrontend
Technology
Android, Laravel, Slim (PHP)
Client
Lippert Inspection GmbH
Year
2014-today
What was Karlmax’s role in the project?
We have been working for Lippert Inspection GmbH within concept and design since 2014, and have developed the app and backend with administrative frontends. Ever since, it has been constantly maintained and expanded to include new functions. The app is used by various licensed retailers and retail chains, and comprehensive customer-specific adjustments have been made over the years.
Why does the user need the App?
As it closes an important gap in an almost completely digitized process.
What can the app do?
Dr. Lippert Consulting is a service provider that checks and logs the quality of fruit and vegetables in the purchasing departments of major retail chains. The app “FruitCheck” supports staff through improving internal workflows: it digitizes professional and standardized checking logs. After completion, the backend automatically sends the final quality report to everyone that works with the data. This gives the checkers more time for their actual task (checking fruit and vegetables). The review data gathered can be evaluated and compared later on. Our clients are the best people to explain how the process behind all this works, and do so on the website for their product, FruitCheck.
The challenge
In the goods receiving area at any large warehouse, a lot goes on across a small space. Fruit and vegetables are unloaded by the pallet (sometimes 100 meters at a time) and moved to their parking positions. Between them, checkers with stock lists, cameras, clipboards, laptops, test gauges and knives walk around and try to carry out spot checks while keeping up the required pace (the goods must be sent on to the individual branches as quickly as possible). The smartphone app not only reduces the number of devices needed. More importantly, a database contains all standards with preformulated defect descriptions and entry forms.
The result is standardized, formatted results without additional work. This approach also makes mandatory double checks easier: a second experienced reviewer can use the app’s logs and photos to carry out a reality check and compare this with the company’s requirements.
How did we proceed?
Firstly, we had to understand which checking tools and criteria are actually essential for the quality assessment of fruit and vegetables and what the process is on site. This was achieved fundamentally by our developers shadowing a normal day of work at the goods receiving area. Based on this, the technical concept and software architecture were developed—robustness had to be maximized above all, as there is never a minute’s peace in the goods receiving area.
Behind the scenes – or: HOW WE LEARNED TO LOVE LITTLE CHANGES.
The creation of checking logs for fruit and vegetables may not seem at first glance like an undertaking of global importance (apart from for exotic fruits). But it’s exactly these projects that are particularly close to our hearts. Why? Progress is nothing other than the sum of many small changes. And the app has made our client an innovation leader in fruit and vegetable quality management, as proven by their nomination for the Fruit Logistica Innovation Award in 2016.
