The Challenge 

Rework is a Groundwork London initiative delivered in association with the Western Riverside Waste Authority and Cory Riverside Energy and supported by the Masonic Charitable Foundation.

Each year thousands of electrical items in the workshop, including washing machines, fridges, cookers, microwaves and other household electrical goods are being processed. These appliances that would have been scrapped, recycled or sent to landfill, are returned to full working order and given a second life. They are then passed onto charity retailers and social enterprises who sell them at affordable prices. 

The team at Rework needed a solution to create a live inventory of goods that had to go through a complex checking process in stages by different team members with different duties. Given the nature of the work being done, the system needed to be fully compatible with mobile devices (iPads). 

The Solution

The application created by the GDS Team on Zoho, was based on the idea that barcode stickers applied to white goods were scanned with iPads. The barcode functioned as a unique identifier for that appliance and followed the item through the whole refurbishment process. 

The workflow was built so that employees had to follow a strict procedure aimed at minimising users' error. Custom scripts helped users accessing the right form and insert relevant information only when needed. 

Views and reports were designed to count and track items so that managers could assign and monitor jobs in real-time. 

Dashboards and reports were designed to allow monitoring performance and quantify the positive environmental impact of Rework.