Transportation Management System (TMS)
About TMS project
Our client – MAKO TSL hired Bright Inventions to build a customized tool for their internal transport management department. MAKO TSL offers fast and safe forwarding and transport services to companies all over Europe.
The client has used various freight management solutions available on the market. Yet none of them met all their needs. So they hired us to build a customized transport management system to be used by the client’s employees.
Main features developed by Bright Inventions
- Importing freight listings from popular transport marketplaces.
- Filtering out listings that don’t match the basic criteria (weight and size of the load, route details, etc.).
- Preliminary matching of the listings with the right vehicle and driver. Then it can be verified by the forwarder.
- Managing the route from arrival to the destination point. Adding extra points on the carriers’ map.
- Receiving notifications from the drivers about delays or other disturbances on the road.
Stack:
Frontend: TypeScript, React, Redux, React Query
Backend: Nest.js, TypeScript, AWS, PostgreSQL, Prisma Android development: Kotlin, Coroutines, Flows, ViewModel, Firebase, Hilt, and other Google APIs
Product design: Figma, Adobe Illustrator
Goal
Our primary goal was to design MVP which could verify the potential of the system to be developed on a bigger scale.
The solution is supposed to transform forwarders’ work into a less repetitive, faster, and more automatic job. The aim is to limit both: the time between finding and matching load with the right transport provider and the number of kilometers done by empty vehicles. Fast and effective utilization of vehicles' spare capacity is essential for the industry.
Also, another long-term goal is to support daily communication with road hauliers.
The challenge of building a transport management system
The main challenge was to build a fast solution. Time is the key to the shipping industry. The app had to aggregate the listings fast and assign them to the right carriers. Every millisecond counts.
What’s more, our team had to design an algorithm that would automatically filter out transport listings to display only the ones that match the client's expectations.
In terms of product design, the right architectural information was the key. Forwarders work at a high pace and they expect any work tool to make their job even faster. The client required us to include as much information as possible on one screen so they could scan all the info fast.
TMS Development Process
Bright Inventions were responsible for every aspect of MVP development from listing requirements, product design, to web development, QA, cloud management, launch, and finally maintenance. The MVP was launched in October 2022 and received positive feedback from the client’s employees.
Web development and maintenance
From the beginning, we were entrusted to choose the right stack and had the pleasure to work with the top tools available at the moment. The client expected to build the fastest possible transport listing filtering system.
To make it possible we implemented the best solutions JavaScript and AWS have to offer with Lambda and SNS on top of them.
As a result, it takes up to 0.5 seconds to filter out the right transport listings and display them to users. In 1 minute we analyze over a thousand job listings to display only the ones that meet all the requirements.
Product design
Before our team presented the MVP mockups we took a couple of crucial steps which helped us design the product. Typically, it all started with desk research, followed by benchmarking. We also had a great opportunity to conduct field studies and user shadowing combined with adaptive interviews. Thanks to our client who enabled us to visit the forwarders who in fact were going to be the MVP end users. Based on that research our product designer created the final MVP designs.
What’s next for Mako TSL and Bright Inventions?
MVP launch ensured the client that the system has the potential to change the daily work on their team. We’re delighted to say that the client decided to continue our cooperation. Now we focus on implementing other features in the system for example the electronic circulation of documents.
Also, we started to work on a mobile app for drivers. It will be launched as an MVP as well. The mobile app for Android will play a crucial role in terms of communication between forwarders and drivers. For example, it will allow sharing of carriers' localization with the forwarders. The app will perform crucial actions even in offline mode.
It’s definitely a busy time for our TMS team. We will keep you updated on the project.