Case study

Custom software

Custom software

Main image for Worcon project - Machine Desk - case study

Machine Desk

Worcon is a Croatian machine engineering startup with a number of offerings for the engineering community. Machine Desk B2B manufacturing platform was developed for connecting industry buyers with supplier. Theirs is also the world’s largest online manufacturing marketplace by number of users and projects.
Main image for Worcon project - Machine Desk - case study

Worcon mission is to grow and cultivate this marketplace and
to better the community by enhancing discovery,
collaboration, purchases and partnering among suppliers and buyers.

Worcon mission is to grow and cultivate this marketplace and to better the community by enhancing discovery, collaboration, purchases and partnering among suppliers and buyers.

Product vision

Worcon needed to build a cloud-based project management tool from scratch — using the latest and greatest technologies at disposal. The tool itself boosts productivity and competitiveness for its users by letting them review and manage machine parks, machines, production equipment and its specifications across filters such as location while enhancing production planning and increasing machine utilisation.
Kodius' mockup of cloud-based project management tool for Worcon; project vision
Kodius' mockup of cloud-based project management tool for Worcon; project vision

Development phases

Development process diagram for Worcon project
Development process diagram for Worcon project

Stack

Starting the entire development process from scratch meant the entire solution was architected by us — both on the frontend and on the backend of things. Backend-wise, we made use of Node.js and NestJS whereas the frontend was based on React and React-Admin. We made use of PostgreSQL as the database management system. The web application is hosted on AWS.

Plus

The wonderful thing about this project was the freedom to choose the technologies we wanted and the ability to make use of the best available tools, practices and conventions on a project built from scratch.

Development phase challenges

Educating and familiarizing their own inhouse developers who were placed in our offices — this took time and effort but was definitely worthwhile.
The choice of React-Admin ended up being a limitation and a challenge. We had to continuously extend React-Admin’s functionalities while adhering to its way of doing things and the structure that it imposes on you. One of the limitations was React-Admin’s handling of data providers which led to some issues while implementing an upload system of our own.
Kodius' mockup of cloud-based project management tool for Worcon; development phase
Kodius' mockup of cloud-based project management tool for Worcon; various tool sections/screens
Case study testimonial double quotes icon
I was surprised and amazed while working with them because they really caught on quickly, and it was agile. Everything went really well. We were amazed by what they did in the end.
Portrait photo of Mario Šipek
Mario Šipek
Project manager
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Complex Business Logic
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When faced with real life complexity there rarely is an easy way out or a silver bullet solution. Here I will describe the model I've come up with during years of trial and error.

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