NFC Nameplate Scanning App for Mining Equipment
Bespoke mining equipment is expensive, highly customised, and often out in the field far from anyone who remembers exactly which manual, spec sheet, or spare part goes with a given unit. This project built a mobile app to close that gap: tap a phone against an NFC tag on the equipment's nameplate, and get straight through to everything relevant to that specific piece of gear.
What tapping the tag unlocked
Reading the NFC tag identified the exact unit, which the app used to pull together three things in one place:
- Manuals — the correct documentation for that specific piece of bespoke equipment, rather than a generic model guide.
- Live health — real-time condition data pulled from an internal bespoke analytics platform, so field staff could see how the equipment was actually performing, not just what the manual said it should do.
- Spare parts ordering — a direct integration into SAP, letting a technician order the exact part needed for that unit without going back to a desk or a different system.
Two very different backend integrations
The two data integrations behind the app were a study in contrasts: SAP for spare parts was a mature, well-documented enterprise system with established integration patterns, while the live health data came from an internal, bespoke analytics platform with none of that scaffolding. Building the app meant working comfortably across both ends of that spectrum — a standard enterprise integration on one side, and a custom integration built specifically for this purpose on the other.
Outcome
The result was a single React Native app that turned a passive nameplate into an active entry point for documentation, live condition monitoring, and spare parts ordering — collapsing what used to be several separate lookups into one tap.
