Performance caching for an assembly line

At the frontend application of an automotive assembly line, database query times collapsed: line workers waited up to eight seconds per part scan. The central, multi-terabyte legacy database sat with corporate IT and could only be changed through months-long approval cycles.

As a two-person team, we worked closely with the client's internal IT and placed an isolated, fast Redis caching web wrapper directly in front of the legacy database. It indexed the active production-lot data and accelerated the display drastically, without touching the central data store.

Load times on screen dropped from around eight seconds to under 150 milliseconds and eliminated the software-induced assembly bottleneck entirely.

The limits of the corporate database were respected throughout — the solution deliberately sat in front of it, not inside it.