PLOTWISE
Full-stack inventory and operations platform for Driscoll's R&D
Overview
The Problem
Driscoll's R&D had no centralized inventory system. Chemicals, fertilizers, and materials were tracked — if at all — across disconnected Excel files, paper invoices, and individual memory. If you asked how much of X we have, the honest answer was: nobody really knew.
My Role
I identified the gap myself. No brief, no ticket, no directive. I saw the problem, proposed the solution, got buy-in, and built it — teaching myself full-stack development, AI-assisted engineering, backend architecture, and database design along the way. This was not a class project. It was a production system, built under real constraints, used by real people, tracking real assets.
What I Built
- Centralized inventory tracking across all R&D sites
- Real-time dashboard with KPIs and operational metrics
- Full audit trail for every inventory movement
- Role-based access control for different team levels
- Multi-site architecture supporting UK and international operations
- Mobile-first web app for field use
- Staging/production environment separation
The Hard Parts
Multi-site architecture. Building a system that could handle multiple R&D sites with different teams, different inventories, and different access levels — while keeping everything in one unified platform.
Database migration incident. A production migration that broke live data. I caught it, rolled back, fixed the migration script, re-ran it, and documented the incident. No data lost, lesson learned the hard way.
Change resistance. Convincing teams to move from spreadsheets and memory to a new digital system. The tool had to be simpler than the old way, or people wouldn't switch.
Outcomes
- £94K of inventory tracked and visible for the first time
- 10 active sites onboarded across the UK
- 12 team members using the platform daily
- 2 countries operational (UK and US)
- Mexico + EMEA rollout planned
What I'm Proud Of
Not the line count. Not the feature list. I'm proud that I saw a gap no one had formally identified, proposed a solution with no guarantee of success, taught myself what I needed to build it, shipped it into production, and watched real teams in two countries change how they work because of it.
What's Next
PlotWise runs on Driscoll's infrastructure and handles real operational data. The repository is private. Architecture diagrams and a technical walkthrough are available on request.