Feels like it was just yesterday when…

We transformed how a full-house inventory exercises were performed across warehouses, for an international book and magazine distribution business.

The solution we introduced included handheld PDAs running Windows CE, with bar-code scanning attachments, hooked up to a custom designed broad WiFi “mesh” network (before modern mesh WiFi became a thing you can buy), backed by a LAMP server hosting the inventory web front-end and database.

This setup was a game changer to the inventory team, as it reduced the amount of time it took to complete their yearly exercise from a multi-week effort to just a few days.

Bear in mind this was before the age of cloud computing, smart phones, 4G/5G networks, lightweight laptops and tablets.

To me, the level of excitement, the dropped jaws on the faces of all team members, senior management, and executive stakeholders, was the payoff to the work we did. It was quite the fun project to be a part of.

This was back in 2003. How time flies by…