Client needed to modernize 20 legacy applications to support & enhance their manufacturing process across the globe. These applications were being used for various manufacturing processes like visualize performance of a storage component, identifying error ratio during manufacturing, trend analysis of error rates/defects, decision guide and trade-off analysis etc. These Applications also helps do advance data analysis and manipulation.

Key challenges

• Current applications were developed 10+ years back using Visual Basic. The legacy technology stack was becoming operational risk.
• Applications were incurring high application maintenance costs
• New feature development & maintenance was difficult due lack of skills availability
• Lack of common coding standards, libraries, documentation lead to delay in configuring system for new product launch, data inconsistencies and accuracy

Client was looking to modernize these applications for agility and flexibility to address advanced manufacturing processes and expedite time to market for new product launches.

As a trusted development partner, we helped create Modern Architecture and a roadmap for re-engineering these 20 legacy applications. Our team of full stack developers and a Product Manager worked very closely with client’s business and technology teams to plan and execute the project.

• Managing project deliverables with cross functional team spread across 4 countries (India, Thailand, Singapore and China)
• Designed & developed platform centric approach to reuse / reutilize 50+ common functionalities across multiple applications resulting in development time reduction and seamless user experience.
• In absence of documentation, jointly studied and arrived at a holistic view of functionality, priorities and technical solution
• As part of the project, we also established an agile development process with proper Dev, QA & Staging environments (which didn’t exist before) as well as a formal QA process.

We chose open source Angular and Node.js as the development stack to modernized these legacy applications which were built using Visual Basic. All the outdated components were re-engineered to eliminate technical debt, if any

• Modular approach : Developed code in modular structure for better re-usability and readability
• Error logging and tracking : Established a logging facility to track, debug, and display error logs
• Database Query Viewer : Small but very important feature. Since all the legacy applications were used primarily for data analysis, we developed a feature where user can view actual query generated by the application. This helped user to compare and verify the data with old applications.
• All the applications were developed in two stages. In 1st stage, core functionalities were developed with modern front end layer developed in Angular and integrated with APIs developed in Node.js. In 2nd stage, advanced features for data analysis and manipulation were developed.

• We completely re-architected these legacy applications from the grounds up.
• Leveraged industry proven open source technologies to reduce technology lock-in, resulting in significant cost savings on licensing costs
• The modernized applications gives client more flexibility to enhance it with new features quicker than the earlier one resulting into better user satisfaction
• Improved reliability & stability, ensuring end user is able to analyse data without any issues resulting into less error during manufacturing process.