About
For Bridgeport National Bindery, a key production partner of Lulu, we re-architected the ERA operating system and refreshed its WPF floor applications on a live factory floor. Using a Strangler Fig approach on a shared database, we rolled out the new .NET web app and operator terminals station by station, rebuilt 15 background jobs as services and added 4 carrier integrations, automated pipelines and monitoring.
Challenge, approach, and impact
Modernizing a live print-on-demand system
ERA, the core system governing the entire order lifecycle for Bridgeport National Bindery, was a .NET monolith with tightly coupled components, which slowed down the delivery of new features. The system could not be taken offline: books had to ship every day, so the re-architecture had to happen on the live factory floor.
Old and New Terminals on One Database
During the gradual rollout, legacy and new operator terminals wrote to the same shared database at the same time. Under heavy parallel load this caused locking problems that had to be solved without stopping production.
How we built
Testimonials
Christoph K.
Lulu Press
“SKM has been a great partner for the upgrade and re-architecture of our legacy implementation. The level of engagement of the team has been outstanding.“
Team structure
Client team
Christoph K
CTO
Daily point of contact
The client stakeholders at Lulu Press were working closely with the team at SKM Group sp. z o.o.
Agency team
2 x Backend Engineer
Production
1 x Project Manager
Governance
