We worked with our partner Barcode Direct (now Peak Technologies) to develop and deliver a set of custom Android applications for a specialty rope manufacturer. We worked with both of them to build specifications for the mobile app and delivered the first version of the application in about a month.
The customer had both off-the-shelf products and then value-add or customized products/assemblies. First, we developed what they called the Palletizing App to organize orders in progress of "sets" standard and customized products that in some cases took days to orgranize and manage. The application allowed users to create/print new/existing SKUs, and create/organize/verify "assemblies" by scanning SKUs and the Pallet identifiers. In their case, the assemblies were organized on a shipping pallet which also had a bar code identifier and the application allowed them to save and verify the contents to the order.
The user could quickly operate the Palletizing App w/ very little UI-clicking. The application was primarily driven by scanning barcodes and using device gestures (shake to cancel/go-back/etc), This simple and effective UI allowed to users to quickly do their job, report progress and get back to building the product/order. The Palitizing App provided validation, order contents or status in mobile application which obtained it's data in the company's ERP system. The pre-existing ERP system was fully operated the company's IT staff on internal servers and accessed over WiFI to the Android phone. We provided both the custom barcode application and the server-side API to run on their custom server and interface with the ERP data.
HINTS: One can build a barcode reading application with a standard Android/iPhone using the camera but ... it's slow, The camera needs to focus and then the user must often activate the picture taking w/ a click on the screen. We have found the reading performance often requires more than 1 scan. It is cost effective, phones can be found for $100,
In our warehouse applications, we often don't use this technique .. time is money. We often add either real barcode scanner connected via USB/Bluetooth or in this case an Android barcode reader from Honeywell where they gets a scan trigger and a visual laser scan line where it's reading the code from. Just works.