Kanto Manufacturing

A shop-floor app built for a building with no signal

Batch numbers were being copied onto paper and typed in at the end of a shift, and the transcription errors were showing up as scrap. The replacement holds a full shift offline and reconciles on reconnect. Scrap attributed to mis-keyed batches fell by two thirds.

Client: Kanto Manufacturing
Sector: Manufacturing
Run: 4 months · Oct 2024–Jan 2025
Filed: 2025-02-06
Capability: Mobile app development · API and system integration · Cloud and Azure solutions · Custom software development
Stack: .NET MAUI · C# · SQLite · ASP.NET Core · Azure SQL · Azure Service Bus · Intune · App Center

Impact

−67%
Scrap attributed to mis-keyed batch numbers
8 hours
Offline capacity — a full shift
Same day
Fix-to-device time via managed distribution

Challenge

Manufacturing
4 months · Oct 2024–Jan 2025

The plant’s two main halls have effectively no mobile signal and patchy wireless coverage by design — the machinery is shielded. Two previous suppliers had proposed applications that assumed connectivity and treated offline as an error state. Supervisors recorded batch numbers, quantities and quality checks on paper, and the data was entered hours later by someone who had not been present, which is where the errors came from.

Solution

Offline was the requirement, not an edge case, so the local store came first and the sync layer second. A shift’s work is held on the device and reconciled when the device reaches coverage, with a conflict rule agreed with the production managers in plain language rather than invented by a developer: the shop floor wins on quantities, the planning system wins on schedule. We tested by turning the network off repeatedly at awkward moments, including mid-submission. Distribution is through Intune rather than the public stores, so a fix reaches every device the same afternoon, and the signing certificate renewal procedure is written down and dated — that is the most common way an internal app quietly dies two years later.

Plates

Plate 01A full shift held locally. Out of coverage is a normal state, not an error.
Plate 02The conflict rule, written in the language the production managers used.

Testimony

The app works in a building with no signal, which is the only requirement that actually mattered and the one every previous supplier treated as an edge case.

Kenji Sato · Plant Systems Manager, Kanto Manufacturing