Suresh's Loading Line

A numbered waiting line for produce sellers, so each one knows which bay his tempo goes to without anyone having to shout across the market.

Who this is for

Suresh Yadav runs four tempos out of the vegetable wholesale shed at Vashi, Navi Mumbai. He has two drivers of his own and hires a third on heavy days. Between four and seven in the morning, thirty to forty sellers want a tempo, and Suresh spends that whole stretch walking the rows with his hands cupped around his mouth, calling for Ramesh bhai from row four while a crate lorry reverses behind him.

How the job is done today

Suresh keeps the order in his head and on the back of an old challan book. A seller catches his sleeve, says he has sixty crates for Panvel, and Suresh writes the shop name with a tick. Then he walks the rows shouting when a bay opens. Half the time the seller has stepped away for tea, so Suresh calls the next one and the first man returns angry. There is a WhatsApp group with twenty sellers in it, but nobody hears the phone over the shed, and by the time a man reads it, his bay has gone to someone else.

The screens, in order

1. Ask for a tempo — Lets a seller put in a request with his crate count and where the load is going, and get a number for that request.
2. My number — Holds one enormous number on the seller's screen that changes colour as he comes closer to the front, so he can prop the phone on a crate and glance at it while he works.
3. Suresh's line — Shows Suresh every request still waiting, in the order it came in, so he can send the next request to whichever bay has just cleared.
4. Bay board — Tells Suresh which of his three bays is free, busy or waiting for a tempo to pull out.
5. My sellers — Keeps the regulars Suresh already knows, so he can add a man to the line himself when the fellow has no phone in hand.
6. Morning list — Looks back over what loaded and what did not, so Suresh can tell at eight in the morning who he kept waiting too long.

What it keeps track of

• Sellers — shop name, the man's name, which row he sits in, phone number
• Requests — who asked, how many crates, going where, the number given, which bay, waiting or called or loaded, what time it came in
• Bays — bay number, free or busy, which tempo is standing there
• Tempos and drivers — vehicle number, driver name, his phone, working today or not

The one decision that matters

The market is loud enough that a ringing phone is the same as no phone. So either the app pushes an alert and hopes the seller feels it, or the number simply lives on his screen, always visible, and he looks at it the way he looks at a clock. Go with the screen. One number filling the whole display, grey while he is far back, yellow when two ahead, green with the bay number when it is his. He rests the phone against a crate and keeps stacking. Add a long vibration for green only, since a phone in a shirt pocket can still be felt. No sound at all, because sound is the one thing that market has already defeated.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out fares, payment and any ledger of who owes what. Suresh settles money in the evening from his challan book and that part is not broken. Leave out live tracking of the tempos on a map too. Nobody at the shed is asking where the vehicle is; they are asking when it is their turn at the bay. Adding money to the first version would mean sellers have to trust the app before it has proved it can stop the shouting.

How you would know it worked

One morning in the middle of the week, Suresh gets from four to seven without walking the rows once, and no seller comes up to the bay before his number goes green.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run four tempos at the Vashi vegetable market and from four in the morning I am shouting names across the shed because nobody can hear a phone ring in there. Build me a phone app where a seller asks for a tempo and gets a number, and that number sits on his screen in big digits that go from grey to yellow when he is nearly next and to green with the bay number when the bay is ready. On my side show me the waiting list in order with who asked, how many crates and where the load is going, so I tap one name and send it to bay one, two or three, and mark it loaded when the tempo pulls out. Let me add my regular sellers myself with their row number, and let me move a man up the list when his lorry is already standing at the gate.