Matna: Production Visibility for Cassava Starch Processing

In many agro-processing plants, the numbers that decide profitability are recorded in notebooks and spreadsheets and compiled days later. By the time a manager sees that yield has dropped or stock is running low, the loss has already happened. Matna turns daily production records into a live view of the operation.

The Problem: Managing Production by Guesswork

• Late figures. Production totals are compiled after the fact, so problems are found too late to act on.
• Unreliable yield. Without consistent records of inflow and output, it is hard to know the true starch yield.
• Stock that doesn't add up. Raw cassava and finished starch balances drift away from what was actually received and produced.
• Hidden downtime. Equipment stoppages go unrecorded, so their cost never shows up in decisions.

Daily Production, Checked as It Is Entered

Floor operators record each day's cassava inflow, starch output, downtime and notes. Matna calculates the yield as the figures are typed and flags values that are physically implausible before they are saved. Saving an entry updates the stock ledger in the same step, so production and inventory never fall out of step.

An Audit-Safe Stock Ledger

Every stock movement, from supplier deliveries to production use, is recorded as an entry in an append-only ledger. Mistakes are corrected by voiding a record, which reverses its stock effect exactly, rather than deleting it. A built-in integrity check confirms that every balance matches its ledger history.

Alerts and Trends for Management

Yield, downtime and stock-cover targets are set centrally, not hard-coded into the screens. When a KPI moves outside its range, the dashboard raises a prioritised alert. The analytics view shows 30-day trends for yield, inflow against output, and downtime, and highlights unusual days so they can be investigated.

What Matna Covers

• Production tracking: daily inflow, output, yield and downtime, with validation on entry.
• Supplier deliveries: a supplier registry and delivery log that adds raw cassava to stock automatically.
• Inventory: live balances of raw cassava and finished starch, with an estimate of days of production remaining.
• Reports: CSV spreadsheets and PDF reports for any period, ready for management meetings.
• Users and access: role-based access, with user management restricted to administrators.

Technology

Matna is built with Django and Django REST Framework on PostgreSQL, with a React dashboard and Recharts for visualisation. Sign-in uses secure httpOnly cookies, and the platform ships with Docker, Gunicorn and Nginx for deployment, plus backup and restore scripts.

Conclusion

Matna replaces end-of-week guesswork with same-day visibility. Every figure is checked as it is entered, every stock movement can be traced, and managers are told when a number needs their attention.

The same approach applies to other processing operations where inflow, output and stock need to be tracked reliably.