Centerpiece Counter

Log every centerpiece as it is packed, and see the whole workshop's total for the week on one shared phone.

Who this is for

Sharmila Pawar runs a decoration workshop off Trimbak Road in Nashik. Six women pack table centerpieces there for wedding orders, and two boys load them into the tempo. On a Saturday morning she has 340 pieces to send to a lawn in Ozar by noon, and she is standing in the doorway asking how many are already taped shut. Nobody agrees on the number.

How the job is done today

There is a spiral notebook on the packing counter with a date scribbled at the top of each page and a row of tally marks under it. Somebody forgets to mark, somebody marks twice, and by evening the marks and the boxes do not match. So Sharmila counts the stacked boxes herself at nine at night, kneeling on the floor with her phone torch. During the week she keeps asking in the workshop WhatsApp group how many are done, and gets three different answers because three people are guessing. The notebook page for last Tuesday is missing entirely.

The screens, in order

1. Who is packing — Shows every worker's name as a large box so a person can claim the phone with one tap and no password.
2. Count — Gives one big button to press each time a piece is packed, with the person's number for the day shown underneath.
3. Last few taps — Lists the most recent entries with the name against each one so a wrong tap can be removed in a second.
4. This week — Shows the workshop's running total for the week and how much each person has added to it.
5. Names — Lets Sharmila add a new packer or hide someone who has left, without touching anything else.

What it keeps track of

• Packers — name, still working here or not
• Packing entries — who tapped, when, and whether it was later removed
• Week target — the number the workshop is aiming for, and which week it belongs to

The one decision that matters

Does each packer sign in with a password, or does she just tap her name on a shared screen? A password keeps the count honest, but the phone sits on a counter next to gum tape and wet florist foam, and the women have glue on their fingers. A password will be forgotten by Wednesday and then everyone will start using Sharmila's. Go with tapping a name, no password. Handle the honesty problem the other way round, by keeping the last twenty taps visible with names against them. A wrong entry gets spotted and removed by whoever is standing there, which is faster than any login would have been.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out the type of piece. Sharmila makes rose bowls, candle stands, brass urlis and eight other designs, and it is tempting to record which one. But if the first tap makes you choose from a list, the tapping stops within two days. Count pieces, nothing else. Also leave out pay calculation, even though the per-piece rate is the obvious next thought. Get the tapping into the hands first. The rest only works if the number is trusted.

How you would know it worked

On Saturday, when the tempo is being loaded in Nashik, nobody opens the notebook. Sharmila reads the number off the phone on the counter, the boys count 340 boxes into the tempo, and the two numbers match. And on Friday evening the packers stop at the counter to see the week's total before they leave.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run a decoration workshop in Nashik with six women who pack table centerpieces for weddings. We have one phone lying on the packing counter that everybody uses. Make me a website where the first screen shows our six names in big boxes. You tap your name, then tap one large button every time you tape a piece shut, and it shows how many you have done since morning. Keep an undo button right there, because wrong taps will happen with glue on the hands. On another screen show the week so far, the total for the whole workshop and how much each person put into it, and let me set the number we are aiming for that week. I should be able to add or remove names myself when someone joins or leaves.