Requisitions
Structured submission flow for teacher requests, including class, venue, date, time, materials and remarks.
Case study · Lab automation
Lab Management System
A practical digital workflow for managing laboratory requisitions, stocktake, breakage reporting and day-to-day operations in a school science laboratory.
The problem
Too many repetitive steps.
Laboratory operations often involve a mix of requisition forms, inventory checks, stocktake records, breakage reports and repeated administrative follow-up.
The goal was not to build software for the sake of it. The goal was to reduce repetitive work, make common tasks easier to track and create one consistent workflow.
Visual walkthrough
Representative mockups, without exposing school details.
These visuals are showcase mockups based on the live workflow and feature set. They are intentionally anonymised so no school-specific or sensitive operational details are exposed.
What it does
A single workflow for common lab tasks.
Inventory search
Quick item lookup across laboratory inventory without blocking requisitions when an item is not found.
Stocktake
A year-end stocktake workflow for checking, updating and restoring inventory items.
Breakage reporting
Simple reporting flow for damaged or broken laboratory glassware and equipment.
Admin tools
Administrative views for health checks, summaries and operational oversight.
Web + bot access
Designed around practical access through a lightweight web interface and messaging workflows.
Design principle
Automation should help, not get in the way.
One important decision was that inventory checking should never block a teacher from submitting a requisition simply because an item is missing from the database or an amount is unclear.
The system is designed to support human workflow rather than force every edge case into rigid software rules.
Stack
Built from practical, replaceable pieces.
Python
Telegram Bot
Google Sheets
Google Drive
Web / PWA
Cloud hosting
The public case study intentionally describes the architecture at a high level. Source code, credentials, internal configuration and organisation-specific data remain private.
What I learned
Useful software starts with the workflow.
The biggest lesson was that the best automation is often small and specific. Understanding the real operational pain points mattered more than choosing a complicated technology stack.
It also reinforced the importance of graceful failure, clear admin controls and keeping manual override possible.
Project status
Still evolving.
The system continues to be refined around actual laboratory workflows. The repository remains private, but selected features and lessons are documented here.