Operational PM Project · Initiated, Scoped & Delivered Independently · 2026
Haynes Brothers operates under Ford warranty obligations requiring all parts removed during a warranty repair to be physically retained for a minimum of three months. Ford can request any part at any point.
If a part cannot be produced, the entire warranty claim is voided — a financial exposure running into thousands of pounds per incident. Before Warranty LocatR, there was no process, no record, and no visibility.
Full feature documentation, role architecture, workflow breakdown, and security overview — for a complete technical and operational picture.
Identified the business need independently, defined scope, and built the case for the solution without being asked — the same judgement a PM applies before a project brief exists.
Defined what the system would and wouldn't do upfront. Role-based permissions, mandatory fields, and structured workflows were scope decisions — made before a single line of code was written.
Four distinct stakeholder roles with different needs, responsibilities, and information access. The Recall Manager's view was built around Chris's actual job — not a generic admin panel.
Every feature maps to a specific operational risk: overdue alerts address the retention risk, the recall log addresses audit risk, mandatory fields address data quality risk. Risk-first design.
Every action in the system is attributed by name and timestamp. The Recall Log, retention reports, and handover confirmations exist because compliance to Ford must be evidenced — not assumed.
The system was built around how the team actually works — not how a developer imagined they worked. The Parts Advisor check-in flow, the 72-hour overdue threshold, the Recall Manager role — all came from understanding the real workflow first.
The team went from no process to a structured daily system. That's a behaviour change — not just a software rollout. Designing a system people would actually use required as much people thinking as technical thinking.
The system was never the goal — zero voided claims and a defensible audit trail were. Every feature decision was tested against that outcome. The benefits are measurable, live, and ongoing.
Parts Advisors log each warranty part immediately after removal — six mandatory fields enforced. The form cannot be submitted incomplete, ensuring data integrity from the first touchpoint.
Before a warehouse location is assigned, physical collection must be confirmed with a timestamp — creating a clear handover record from holding area to warehouse custody.
Each part is assigned an exact warehouse location with optional condition notes. Every action is attributed to a named user with a timestamp, building a fully defensible audit trail.
Any user can search by Part Number, WIP Code, or description. Fuzzy matching means a wrong part number can still surface the right part — a deliberate safety net against data entry errors.
When Ford emails a recall request, the Recall Manager triggers a Ford Recall Request in the system. An immediate red alert fires to the Admin dashboard. Resolution is logged with a full timestamped audit trail.
The Dashboard gives Admins and Recall Managers a real-time overview of everything in the system. Seven live stat cards surface what matters: total active parts, unlocated parts, overdue parts flagged at 72 hours, upcoming expirations, and a split by department.
Any unresolved Ford recall request triggers a persistent red banner — impossible to miss, immediately actionable.
Every part tracked in the system automatically approaches its 3-month Ford retention deadline on a countdown. A 14-day expiry warning fires before the deadline. Parts auto-move to a Disposal folder at 3 months and are permanently deleted two weeks later.
The Expiring Soon page presents a colour-coded table — red under 14 days, amber at 14–21 days, green at 21–30 — so priority is immediate and unambiguous. Admin can export a monthly retention report as a CSV in one click.
When Ford emails a recall request, the Recall Manager logs it directly in Warranty LocatR. The system finds the part, timestamps the request, and fires an immediate alert to the Admin dashboard. Resolution is confirmed in the system and recorded for audit.
Every recall request — past and present — is stored in the Recall Log with a complete timestamped audit trail. If Ford ever challenges a claim, the evidence is there.
Before Warranty LocatR, the business was running a compliance and financial risk with no process to manage it. A single voided Ford warranty claim can cost upwards of £5,000. The system eliminates that exposure through structure, not chance.
Across 10–15 parts processed per day, it also returns significant time — removing a 15–25 minute manual search process and replacing it with a sub-60 second lookup for any user on any device.
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Part retrieval time | 15–25 mins | Under 60 seconds |
| Audit trail | None | 100% — every action timestamped |
| Recall response process | Unstructured | Logged, alerted & resolved in system |
| Overdue part visibility | None | Real-time dashboard alert at 72hrs |
| Expiry risk management | Manual — if remembered | Automated — 14-day warning + CSV export |
| Voided claims since launch | Risk unmanaged | Zero |
| System running cost | N/A | Flat Replit hosting fee only |
I recognised a compliance and financial risk that had no owner, no process, and no visibility — and initiated a solution entirely unprompted. This is the instinct a PM brings before a project brief exists.
The four-role permission model was a stakeholder decision, not a technical one. I mapped each role to their actual responsibilities and built access around how they work — requirements gathering applied to a real team.
Every feature was built with defensibility in mind — timestamped actions, named users, retention reports, recall logs. This is PRINCE2 governance thinking: assume you will need to evidence compliance, and build for it from day one.
Initiation through to live production — scoping, stakeholder mapping, build, deployment, user management, and ongoing ownership. This project was managed with the same structure I would bring to any formal PM engagement.
No budget, no team, no specification. Built and live at flat hosting cost, processing 10–15 parts per day. Constraints are not blockers — they're the conditions under which real delivery happens.
Zero voided Ford warranty claims since deployment. A 15–25 minute search process reduced to under 60 seconds. These aren't projected benefits — they're live, sustained outcomes from a system in daily use.
This project wasn't about building an app.
It was about identifying a business risk, defining a solution, managing its delivery, and realising measurable benefits — with no instruction and no team.
That sequence — problem identification, scope definition, stakeholder mapping, delivery, governance, benefits realisation — is the PM lifecycle. Warranty LocatR demonstrates it end-to-end, in a live commercial environment, at real operational scale. The certifications confirm the methodology. This project proves the application.