Design and Implementation of a Microservices-Based Serialization System

Digital innovation is transforming tools and processes across all industries, and adapting to these changes is essential for companies that aim to stay competitive in their field. Integration of new technologies, tools and software can significantly improve communication between businesses and clients, speed up crucial processes, and increase overall productivity. One critical internal process affected by this digital transformation is product serialization. An effective serialization system simplifies the tracking a product’s lifecycle for company operators and provides customers with accessible product information. Therefore, enhancing this process can lead to improvements in production management and customer relationship management. This thesis focuses on the development of a system to digitalize the serialization process and to support business-customer interactions through a customer portal for AROL company. Serialization allows operators to generate a unique QR code for each product, which can be scanned by customers or operators to obtain product-specific information, differentiated based on user permissions. To achieve these goals, the system consists of a frontend web application, discussed in a parallel thesis by another PoliTo student, and a backend system, which is the main focus of this project. Following the current best practices in modern web application development, the backend system will be built using a microservices architecture. It will not only manage product serialization, but also provide functionalities to support a customer portal for client interactions. A crucial feature of this system is user verification and permission management, which determines what information users can access by scanning a QR code and what operations they are authorized to perform. This security layer is handled by an IAM (Identity and Access Management) microservice. Additionally, the system includes a machinery microservice that manages AROL product data, enabling users to fetch information about specific products. The ticket microservice, which constitutes the core of the serialization mechanism, translates unique string identifiers into internal serial codes and vice versa. These identifiers are then used to generate QR codes for the corresponding AROL products. The thesis covers the design and implementation of these microservices and concludes with the release a proof-of-concept software that will be evaluated by the company to assess its feasibility and potential integration into the existing IT ecosystem.