Product Catalog & Manufacturing Order Management Web App

Executive Summary

The application joins the product catalog and the order process. Customers view product specifications, the sales team records orders, and production updates the status at each stage of work.

Background

Product information was sent as separate files, and orders were re-entered in several places. Customers had to ask directly to learn how their order was progressing, and sales and production did not share a single source of data.

Solution Architecture

Order status is modeled as a fixed sequence of stages: received, confirmed, in production, quality check, and shipped. A stage can only move forward one step at a time, and every change records the user and the time.

Role	Access
Customer	View the catalog and own order status
Sales	Create and confirm orders
Production	Update production and quality stages

Technical Implementation

The Node.js backend exposes separate routes for catalog, orders, and users. Passwords are stored as hashes, and every route checks the caller’s role before processing a request. The catalog page loads images lazily and uses paginated MySQL queries.

CREATE INDEX idx_orders_status
  ON orders (status, created_at);

Results & Impact

Sales no longer enters the same order data more than once, and customers can check status without contacting staff. The catalog page loads in under two seconds on a standard office network.