Alpha Recycling Case Study

Clients Profile

www.pgs-soft.com

Alpha Recycling is one of the fastest growing east coast recycling providers and the largest catalytic
converter processor in United States characterized by huge volumes, an own fleet of freight vehicles and
dedicated teams of field buyers. Processing over 150 000 converters monthly, its crucial advantage over
competition is a modern business model that relies on innovative IT solutions.
By being able to instantly and accurately assess the profit range for each converter thanks to a specialized
application with a mobile client, the Alpha Recycling buyers can offer highest market prices to individual
and institutional scrap sellers. In the meantime, a state of the art back-end ERP takes care of financial
transactions, price lists, accounting and reports while communicating through several commercial APIs.
PGS Software was proud to build this very specialized and comprehensive solution.

1.

CHALLENGES

The long and industry-specific feature list we set to achieve in this project didnt come without its challenges.
Most important of them included:

Pre-existing code. Weve inherited the alpha build from another company that earlier unsuccessfully worked
on the solution. This made getting into the project considerably harder.

Transaction, ticket and account management systems. We had to carefully map both daily and periodic

business processes at Alpha Recycling and make sure ERP handles all the current and potential use cases.

Instant appraisals. Providing android app with a module that could support off-site transactions and instantly
evaluate converters based on a rich database of specifications and current market prices.

Offline synchronization. Buyers often worked on remote sites, where mobile devices lost connection or ran
out of power. The transaction and appraisal systems had to handle all interruptions on the go and then
seamlessly sync back without losing any information.

Huge mobile data packages. Long price lists and inventories often exceeded what a mobile device could

feasibly receive and process. Smart queuing and pre-processing helped cut them down in manageable
chunks.

Seamless integration with several inbound and outbound APIs for financial information, communication,
automatic messaging etc.

Providing a high degree of test automation in order to facilitate cheaper and more efficient releases.
www.pgs-soft.com

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2.

PROCESS

Design: the initial code and design of the

application had been passed on to us by another
company. The code unfortunately didnt function
well and didnt meet many functional requirements.
We were soon back to the drawing board, preparing
a diagram of a new ERP solution in close cooperation
with the Alpha recycling team. We wanted it to
closely represent business processes and daily
operations of their organization.
Development: Our first step was to build a
backbone of our ERP system hosted on the Heroku
app cloud: a robust transaction and account
management module that could securely handle
individual buyer and client accounts, as well as
financial flows between them and ticket handling.

Technologies

Ruby 2.0, Ruby on Rails 4,

angular.js, Heroku PaaS ,
Capybara, RSpec, PostgreSQL,
Redis, Memcached, Rollbar,
New Relic

API integrations

Fastmarkets (prices), Mandrill

(e-mails), Interfax (faxes), Twilio
(text), Google Cloud Storage

Resources

3 Ruby developers, 1 Android

developer, 1 tester

Duration

16 months

Hours spent

5100h for ERP system

(including updates & support),
2600h for mobile client
(including updates & support),
1800h for testing

Then, we had to solve the issue of offline

transaction and synchronizations. Many actions
were performed on remote locations, without data
access. Data was synchronized later, prompting the
need to build a robust syncing solution that would
maintain database integrity without sacrificing the
offline flexibility.
Another important step was related to the
dynamic component price lists built individually
for each client and based on current market data
from Fastmarkets API. Other APIs were used for
automated outbound communication via e-mails,
faxes and text messages. Weve then added a
module that would create and manage inventory lots to be sent to specific recycling plants, as well as
generate accurate shipping manifests.
Other tasks included extensive performance optimizations and UI / UX tweaks. Weve also built a powerful
analysis suite allowing the company to keep track of profitability of all individual buyers and scrap lots.

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3.

RESULT

Business and user benefits:

Ability to quickly asses the profit range of any converter
Fast, secure & reliable transaction system
Account monitoring and financial alerts
A mobile app for remote operation
Support for offline transaction and ticket handling
Building converter lots for shipping to processing plants
Powerful statistical analysis modules
Smart synchronization algorithms
Faster software updates thanks to automated testing

Mobile application: in the meantime, our experienced

mobile developer was preparing a mobile application for
off-site use. It had to operate on large chunks of data and
handle communication cut-outs and data connection loss.
Testing & support: another unique feature of the project
was a large coverage of testing scripts, prepared by our
automation experts. This allowed us to iterate & launch
new features much faster. We supplemented scripts with
work of a single dedicated expert, achieving excellent
quality without employing a full testing team.
Further deployments: the application offered so many
novel functionalities in the field of converter recycling,
that sister company of Alpha also used it. The application
back-end currently serves multiple businesses through a
clever multitenancy implementation.

Clients Profile
The project proved that PGS Software is quick to
recognize and understand the business needs, as well
as specifics of daily operations of companies from
unique industry sectors. Perhaps the most important
technical feat achieved by the team - the hybrid online
/ offline database solution - also shows our will to
creatively overcome operational obstacles. Overall the
Alpha Recycling project remains a great testament to
the skill of our Ruby developers, and a good showcase
of close relationships we always try to build with clients
operations team.
About the product: Alpha recycling is one of the largest east shore recycling companies, operating an own
fleet of vehicles and a team of specialized buyers.
About PGS Software: We are a public Polish IT outsourcing company specialized in software development
and employing over 300 experienced engineers. Our job is to convert your ideas into real-life custom business
solutions unavailable with the off-the-shelf boxed products.
www.pgs-soft.com

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