Warehouse conveyor backend

At Atlanticsoft I worked for a logistics client whose name is withheld. Its warehouse runs an automated sorting conveyor, managed by a warehouse management system (WMS), along which physical parcels travel.

The conveyor does not wait: while the backend decides, the parcel keeps moving. If the response arrives late, the system and the conveyor fall out of sync. The requirement was to respond in under 1 second.

Separately, the order automations ran as Chrome extensions and produced order cancellations that had to come down.

Software developer. I built the critical backend of the conveyor, migrated the automations from Chrome extensions to Selenium clusters on Docker on Azure, and delivered the warehouse control interfaces in Bubble, integrated with the backend.

1. A backend designed to respond in under 1 second

   Every late response puts a physical parcel out of sync, so response time was an operating requirement and not a nice to have performance metric.

2. Selenium clusters on Docker on Azure instead of Chrome extensions

   A cluster of containers is replicated, restarted and watched from one place, which Chrome extensions do not allow. After the migration, order cancellations dropped sharply.

3. Control interfaces in Bubble integrated with the backend

   They gave warehouse operations control screens without building a custom front end, connected to the same backend.

The software has to keep pace with physical objects in motion: there is no room for a slow response and a failure shows up on the warehouse floor, not only in a log. On top of that, moving the Chrome automations to Selenium in containers meant changing the base of processes that were already in use.

The backend kept response times under 1 second, and with that the physical parcels and the system stayed in sync. The migration to Selenium clusters on Docker on Azure sharply reduced order cancellations, and the Bubble interfaces gave warehouse control on top of the same backend.

• Selenium
• Docker
• Azure
• Bubble
• WMS