Production planning gets harder as manufacturers grow and customers demand customization. Worcon set out to launch Machine Desk — a cloud-based project and task management tool for CNC shop floors — and needed it built from scratch with a development partner.
Croatian startup Worcon builds digital solutions for manufacturing companies — primarily in the automotive, transportation, pharmaceutical and aviation industries.
In 2020 they launched Machine Desk: a software solution for project and task management on CNC shop floors that improves information flow across production processes, raises product quality, reduces costs and increases overall productivity.
For the management of production processes, Machine Desk offers a focused set of capabilities:
Built for the shop floor — a touch-friendly, glove-friendly UI that holds up next to a running machine.
Worcon needed a cloud-based project management tool built from scratch. An external partner recommended Kodius — a fit on modern technologies, and the most competitively priced.
The deciding factor: Worcon wanted a partner to establish the architecture and then keep building it alongside their in-house team — and that was the plan from the start.
Machine Desk’s architecture was set from the ground up — frontend and backend. Once it was in place, Worcon’s in-house developers joined the team and continued building alongside Kodius.
Building from scratch meant the stack could be chosen on merit — the best available tools, practices and conventions, with nothing inherited to work around.
Architecture, conventions, libraries and tooling were picked for what Machine Desk needed next, not for what an existing codebase could tolerate — so the foundation has aged with the product instead of against it.
Bringing Worcon’s in-house developers up to speed took time — and it paid off.
They worked from the Kodius office, joined team-building events, and were part of the team like everyone else.
Seven engineering stages, run as a continuous loop across the ~30 months Kodius has been building Machine Desk — from database architecture through real-time release.
More than 90% of digital products fail in their first year.
Architecture that holds up under load, code another team can keep changing, and a UI the shop floor will actually use — those are the three things that decide whether a product survives the first year.
Worcon turned an idea into a product that landed in that top 10% — signed by 30+ manufacturers since launch, still in production today.
Since launch, Machine Desk has attracted the attention of a wide range of manufacturers, signed up over 30 clients, and continues to gain popularity.
I was surprised and amazed while working with them because they really caught on quickly, and it was agile. Everything went really well. We were amazed by what they did in the end.
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