POCCO Get a quote

Home What we build How we work Our work About Contact

(Our work)

From a slip in a pocket to the owner's cost figure

We would rather show you one project properly than list ten logos. Here is the flagship build in detail, and what we are working on now.

A coal processing plant operating on a client mine site

The REEF Operations Platform

Members of our team designed and built the operations platform for Resource Energy Engineering Fuels, a mining business running processing plants across multiple sites. We worked directly with the owner from the first brief through to the final walkthrough, and the questions he answered in writing changed what we built.

4Connected modules over one record

3Sites kept separate, visible to the owner

21Screens, plus a handset application

100%Of changes carrying a name and a reason

(The problem)

Everything existed. Nothing agreed.

The business did not lack information. It lacked one copy of it.

Repairs on slips

Written down at the machine and keyed in later, if at all, so no machine had a history worth reading.

A stock file per site

Each site counting its own parts in its own spreadsheet, which meant parts were bought that already sat on a shelf elsewhere.

Costs assembled by hand

After the month had closed, which is the moment it stops being useful. Cost per ton arrived weeks too late to act on.

Downtime by recollection

Stoppages remembered rather than recorded, so a recurring fault was paid for several times before anyone saw the pattern.

The platform presented at an industry showcase

(What we built)

One record. One rule.

A figure is captured once, by the person who saw it, and is never typed a second time. Everything else in the design follows from that sentence.

A fitter logs a repair at the machine. The parts he used leave the stock figure his manager reads. That same record produces the cost per ton the owner opens, inside the month rather than after it.

›

Maintenance and equipment

Machine history, expected life measured in hours and in output, and a service that falls due by whichever comes first.

›

Stock and purchasing

A live figure per site, reorder requests raised automatically, and an order workflow that only moves forward.

›

Cost and reporting

Cost per ton with fixed and variable kept apart, a period report with a written summary, and a spreadsheet export.

›

Performance and downtime

Stoppages grouped by cause, which only works because the cause is picked from a list rather than typed into a notes field.

›

A handset application

Installed on the phone, with its own icon, for the people who are nowhere near a desk when the thing happens.

›

An assistant that checks itself

Plain language questions about stock, repairs or costs, where every figure in the answer is verified against a live query before it is allowed out.

(What carried over)

Not mining ideas. System ideas.

Four decisions from that build are now in everything we do, because they belong in any system that holds a figure somebody will later be asked to defend.

Separation in the data

One site cannot see another's figures, and the rule sits in the database rather than on the screen, so it holds whichever way the record is reached.

A reason on every change

Required by the data layer, written at the same instant as the change, and impossible to remove afterwards.

No silent overwrites

Two people on one record do not quietly destroy each other's work. The second save is refused and shown what it would have replaced.

Rules at the lowest layer

Enforced where they cannot be bypassed, rather than in the screen that happens to be in front of somebody at the time.

In development

Huyaa

Our own application, currently in active development. We will have more to say about it when it is ready to be judged rather than described. If you are curious, ask us on a call and we will tell you where it is.

Ask us about Huyaa

Your operation next?

Every system we build starts with somebody describing a frustration. If anything on this page sounded familiar, that is a good enough place to begin.

Start a conversation