Grafibeira
A custom production management system built for a print shop with 44 years of history
Grafibeira is a Portuguese full-service print shop located in in Oliveira do Hospital. Their team offers printing and packaging services for commercial printed materials across the country.
Founded in 1983, over 44 years ago, it's a business built on precision, deadlines and an operational discipline that only comes with decades of practice.
Project Type
Internal Tool
Industry
Printing
Services
Frontend Development
Backend Development
UX/UI Design
Timeline
March 2026
0H
0H
saved per day
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+ 0%
of orders processed
0%
0%
error rate since app adoption
0%
0%
team adoption
What wasn't working before
When Nuno, Grafibeira's manager, came to us, production was managed through a mix of paper job sheets and spreadsheets updated by hand, with verbal status checks between departments.
For 44 years, this was enough. But order volume was gradually increasing and the margin for error was shrinking. Their system didn't allow for a real-time view of what stage a job was at, who had handled it, or whether it was ready to ship. Critical information lived inside people's heads instead of an organized, collaborative system.
Our shared and clear goal
We designed and built a web-based production management system in four weeks. Every decision came back to one goal: anyone on the floor should be able to know exactly where every job stands, at any moment, without having to ask.
Linear production flow
We moved the core process into the system. Now, every job moves through a fixed sequence: pre-press, printing, finishing, quality check, shipping and invoicing. No order is ever lost in the noise.
PIN authentication
To ensure every team member is always aware of a job's status, every state transition is now logged with the employee's individual PIN. This creates full traceability of who did what and when. A question that used to interrupt the floor every day simply stopped being asked.
QR code shipping validation
To ensure counting errors, returns and double work don't happen, every package now gets a unique QR code generated during finishing. A shipment can only be completed once every code has been scanned. One missing scan, the system stops.
Real-time production panel
The live dashboard can be displayed on screens around the factory floor, allowing all team members to see exactly where every order stands without interrupting anyone to find out.
Drag & drop prioritisation
When an urgent order comes in, jobs can be reprioritised immediately. No manual rescheduling and no confusion about what's next.
What it changed on the floor
Within days of going live, Grafibeira reported saving two hours a day in all processes. Time previously spent on manual tracking, verbal status checks and error correction was replaced by a system that simply works.
In April, our CEO, João Saraiva, drove to Oliveira do Hospital to see it running in the real environment. The factory floor is loud, the pace is relentless. And in the middle of all of that, the system was just there, doing its job quietly while everyone did theirs.
The client has since commissioned a further 90+ hours of features, including a production calendar, kanban view, client-facing pages and inspection sheets. When a team starts trusting a tool, they start imagining what else it could do and when they trust the people who built it, they keep coming back.
