IronRidge

The Challenge

IronRidge manufactures and sells mounting hardware for solar panels. They have several different product lines which accomodate solar systems installed on sloped roofs, flat roofs, open ground, and poles.

When an installer is planning out a project, they are trying to optimize for cost, but also ensure their plan doesn't impose forces on the roof / piers that exceed it's capabilities. This is a complex and time consuming process that often requires installers to pay for expensive structural engineering consultation.

Our Contribution

Working with IronRidge's mechanical and structural engineers, we developed online Design Assistants™ that allow the installer to quickly and easily spec out the system they are configuring using graphical tools.

The Design Assistants™ then calculate all the engineering loads and Bill of Materials/cost for the installation. The installer can also easily "what if" and see how changes in panels, spans, or other criteria affect the loads and costs of the system.

By working with Development Leverage, IronRidge was able to take a process that normally takes hours down to fractions of a second, and gain a major competitive advantage.

Technologies: Rails 3.2, Cloud hosted on Amazon, CoffeeScript, jQuery, Raphael, HAML, Devise, RSpec, FactoryGirl, MySQL