Meyer Terrace Planner — Digitizing a Traditional Trade

Since its foundation in 1890, Meyer has become one of the greatest and most popular full-range suppliers for wood and wood look floors in Austria. The company is also present in international markets such as the USA, Scandinavia, Slovenia and Croatia and is market leader in the sale of terrace floorboards in Austria.

At the beginning of our collaboration, the trade had still been a far way off from digitization. There were no technical solutions available to automatically make calculations for designs that also take into account factors such as material-specific offcuts, aesthetics and complex layouts. Before our cooperation, the range of tools was limited to cost and stock calculators for constructions with beam elements. Those could only deliver approximate calculations for default layouts (rectangular, L form, U form). For detailed cost calculations that also worked with complex layouts, users had to contact the distributor who in turn had to manually make calculations at great effort and with no guarantee of receiving an actual order.

Together with Meyer, we developed a high-quality and intuitive online terrace planner. It is the first of its kind to facilitate fully automatic calculations of any layout within minutes. The tool calculates the ideal floorboard cuts and considers the various laying restrictions of the respective laying types.

One of the biggest challenges was the development of the necessary algorithms that could take into consideration laying restrictions, laying types, custom layouts and offcut optimization. An example of that would be calculating if offcuts that result from cutting out floorboards can be reused in a different part of the terrace. To that end, the algorithm has to loop its calculation, simulate the different possibilities and compare them so as to achieve the most efficient use of materials.

Among the most important features was the creation of a complete stock list with products, amounts and prices as well as the respective layout of the floorboards and the necessary underconstruction. The system should thereby also give laypersons the possibility to fully design their terrace in accordance with all the technical requirements despite a lack of technical know-how. The application therefore fills an important gap in the way to digitally ordering a technically complex construction.

With the most recent feature extensions, we made several technical and functional adaptations. Chief among those was adding additional laying types and patterns that are used in other countries. In addition, the planner is not limited to the products of Meyer and can be adapted with any product portfolio. We also took into account localization, different units of measurement and an optional connection to existing ERP systems and separated the app into distinct modules in order to satisfy the various country-specific needs and budgets.

That is how the terrace planner has been turned into a marketable digital product which thanks to its modularity can cater to different international target markets and allows our client to take on a new position as provider of cloud-based SaaS software.