Success Stories
Supply Chain In-Sites Limited
Supply Chain In-Sites Limited (SCI) is a forward-thinking company dedicated to redefining supply chain management, certification, and compliance standards. Since its establishment in 2021, SCI has driven innovation by challenging conventional methods to provide tailored programs and advanced solutions that elevate traceability and provenance. The team’s diverse expertise empowers clients to enhance operational efficiency and build resilient, future-ready supply chains.
Product
Technologies
Flutter, Node.js API, React JS
Goal and Objective
SCI sought to improve data collection within the agricultural sector, particularly among Thai farmers growing low-carbon rice. The objective was to build a mobile app that would allow farmers to log reports, take photos, and update data such as fuel usage, fertilizer application, water levels, and chemical inputs. The goal was to replace outdated methods—like Excel sheets and group chats—with a more efficient, user-friendly system that could be easily adopted in rural farming contexts.
A key aim was to collect the data needed to calculate actual reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from rice cultivation, which is a major source of global emissions. This information would support SCI’s broader mission of promoting sustainability and low-carbon agriculture, starting in Thailand and potentially scaling further.
Technologies
and Tools:
To meet SCI’s needs, we utilized:
- Flutter for cross-platform mobile app development
- Node.js API for backend services
- React JS for the user interface
- UX/UI Design tailored for ease of use, ensuring the app was intuitive for Thai farmers
Features:
- User Registration for farmers to sign up
- Photo Capture to log data visually
- Face detection to personalize and secure data entries
- GPS Integration for location-based data logging
Challenges
- User-Friendliness: The initial MVP (Minimum Viable Product) design didn’t meet the desired ease of use for farmers. The challenge was ensuring the app was accessible and simple for farmers, especially given the technical limitations of the MVP.
- Understanding the Agricultural Sector: As a team unfamiliar with rice farming, we had to quickly grasp the nuances of the agricultural industry to tailor the app’s features to meet the real needs of the farmers.
- Balancing Cost and Functionality: The MVP needed to be cost-effective, but also needed to meet the demands of the farmers, which led to some adjustments in design and functionality throughout development.
Result
The mobile app was successfully launched on the Google Play Store for Android users. With the app in use, farmers now have a more reliable and efficient way to log and report critical agricultural data. The app’s user-friendly interface and features like photo capture, GPS tracking, and easy data input helped solve key pain points faced by farmers in data collection. Additionally, the app’s integration with the back-end system enables seamless data management and traceability, aligning with SCI’s vision of creating a more efficient supply chain.
Data Collection for Carbon Emission Calculation
As part of this project, we collected data from farmers to assess carbon emissions based on their farming practices. SCI has its own formula to calculate the carbon emissions per harvest, considering factors such as:
- Fertilizer usage
- Chemical line status
- Fuel consumption
- Farming methods
- Identification of the community source for the produce
- Energy source usage (e.g., solar or other forms)
This data helps SCI track and verify the environmental impact of their farming processes and supports their sustainability goals.
Note: The app is currently available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. You can download it from the
Google Play Store.
SCI's Collaboration with Farmers
SCI works closely with farmers, offering them a platform to register and document key details about their farming practices. This includes logging energy usage, such as solar power or other energy sources used during rice cultivation. The app helps farmers track these details to calculate the yield while focusing on reducing carbon emissions and supporting global sustainability efforts.
Currently, around 200 farmers are using the app to streamline their data entry process and contribute to the initiative of low-carbon rice verification.
“At SCI we’re running a project to monitor the cultivation of low carbon rice, and this presents some unique challenges as rice is grown by hundreds of independent farmers who need to follow a precise method of cultivation to deliver the 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. To support this work we needed a mobile App to collect images and data to verify that the correct practices were in place in every field.
Manao Software developed a mobile App that was simple to use by the farmers but collected all the required monitoring data from the fields. This enabled us to provide a highly-efficient and accurate system to calculate the actual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The Manao team were highly enthusiastic, doing their own research into rice farming and bringing their own ideas to the project to ensure a successful outcome for a challenging project”.
Peter Bracher
Consultant | Supply Chain In-Sites Ltd
