Terumo's traditional Japanese decision-making process (Ringi) kick-started their low-code journey

Terumo, a global leader in medical technology and innovation, began their low-code adventure by reimagining the Japanese business practice of ringi in the digital era. From there we moved to manufacturing, using Mendix to stream-line their shop floor in Leuven and beyond.

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From Japanese Ringi to digital CAS

If you’ve ever done business with Japanese organisations you may have heard of ringi - a bottom-up approach to corporate decision making designed to encourage input and communication across all levels of management.

At Terumo EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Asia), ringi involves informal meetings, emails and calls to discuss and validate internal proposals that require investment capital. But when you’re spending millions on those proposals, you might want something a little more ‘official’ to keep track. With this in mind they first turned to traditional development, but found the process too slow. Then, who would have guessed, they discovered the magic of low code.

The major benefits Mendix brought to this project were speed, agility and easy iteration for future updates, which is further aided by an intuitive feedback system allowing users to leave comments on specific components throughout the development process. The track took 6 weeks from start to finish and the resulting CAS (corporate authorisation system) mobile app has already helped improve communication and consolidate the company’s decision-making flow.

We chose Mendix not only for its speed but also its agile methodology. While we’re definitely learning more about low-code ourselves, what’s most valuable to us is the guidance and expertise Mayker continues to offer as we grow together.

Sigurd Segers - ICT Director Terumo EMEA

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Integration is key

With the CAS app successful, Terumo plans on integrating it into their existing budget approval system and cost centres, which means migrating it from the Mendix Cloud to SAP Business Technology Platform - no small feat, but one we look forward to completing.

Meanwhile, we’ve already started a potentially much more significant project with Terumo to integrate low-code solutions into their manufacturing process. Starting with their production plant in Leuven, we’re co-creating an app to log all activities and information from the moment materials arrive in the loading bay to the day they’re packed up and shipped off as products.

Sigurd Segers, ICT Director at Terumo Europe, also hopes low-code can bring the company closer to their customers - medical professionals around the world who rely on Terumo’s products to save lives. “We’re always trying to improve our customer contact points, so we can gather more feedback and make better solutions. We believe low-code can definitely help with this goal.”

Learn more about Terumo

Practical lessons from manufacturing sites: when standalone Node-RED is enough and when you need FlowFuse

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Many factories start with Node-RED and do great. One use case, one engineer, one site — it just works. Then a year passes. A second site gets added. A third engineer joins the team. A compliance audit lands on the desk. And suddenly, things get messy.

At Mayker, we work with both every day. We're not selling either product, we're integrators who need to make it work on the factory floor. After dozens of implementations, we've developed a clear sense of when standalone Node-RED is enough, and when FlowFuse becomes the better choice.

This is what we've learned.

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What does Node-RED actually do?

Node-RED is an open-source integration tool. Visual, low-code and event-driven. You connect blocks: if this, then that.

But "if this, then that" can be surprisingly powerful. Take a sensor counting products on a production line. On its own, that's just a number. But calculate the time between products, and suddenly you're detecting micro-stops. Add a threshold, and you're flagging anomalies before anyone notices. Combine it with operator data, and you know who was on shift when something went wrong.

That's what Node-RED does: it takes raw data from machines and sensors, enriches it with context, and turns it into something useful. From "a product passed" to "the line stopped for 5 seconds during operator X's shift."

It's free, flexible, and great for prototyping. For a single use case or proof of concept, it's excellent.

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What is FlowFuse  and how does it relate to Node-RED?

FlowFuse is built by the initial core team behind Node-RED, but designed for production environments. Same Node-RED engine underneath, but wrapped in everything you need when you're no longer prototyping:

• Version control: see who changed what, when, and roll back if needed
• Role-based access: operator X can view dashboards, engineer Y can edit flows, manager Z approves deployments
• Central management: one overview of all your instances across sites
• Audit trails: essential for NIS2 and other compliance requirements
• Fleet deployment: update dozens of instances at once instead of one by one

Think of it this way: Node-RED is the engine. FlowFuse is the garage, the maintenance schedule, and the fleet manager,  all in one.

Node-RED and FlowFuse in practice: four use cases

We've implemented both tools across different customers and situations. Sometimes FlowFuse was the obvious choice, sometimes standalone Node-RED still does the job.

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Detecting micro-stops with FlowFuse across 7 sites

A food producer wanted better visibility into their packaging lines. Sensors were already counting products, but the raw numbers didn't tell them much.

We designed a standardized flow that calculates the time between products passing. If that gap exceeds a threshold, it's flagged as a micro-stop. We enrich each anomaly with timestamp, production batch, and operator on shift,  turning a simple count into an actionable insight.

This now runs across 7 sites worldwide: Belgium, Thailand, the US, and more. Same code, developed once, deployed centrally. When we improve the logic, it rolls out everywhere. With standalone Node-RED on each site, we'd be managing 7 separate versions with no guarantee they're in sync. FlowFuse made central deployment and version control possible.

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Multi-site harvest workflow with FlowFuse

Harvest season at a vegetable processor means two months of trucks arriving non-stop. Farmers want to dump their load and get back to the field, fast.

We built an operator app on the weighbridge. The farmer enters their ID, the system captures weight and license plate automatically, and assigns a silo based on product type and available capacity. What used to be chaos — trucks waiting, wrong silos, lost paperwork — became a structured flow.

This app runs on three sites. Updating one means updating all three. With standalone Node-RED, that's three manual interventions and three chances for version drift. With FlowFuse, we deploy once and push to all locations. We see at a glance that all three run identical code  and when harvest season ends, we know exactly what version ran where.

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Energy monitoring across sites with FlowFuse

A vegetable processor operates two freezer warehouses, each with its own energy bill but no way to compare consumption patterns or spot inefficiencies across sites.

We stream energy data from both locations to a central FlowFuse instance in the cloud, where it's aggregated and visualised. The insight that emerged: running freezers at -13°C costs nearly twice as much as -12°C. For most products, that one degree doesn't affect quality  but it cuts the energy bill significantly.

You could run a standalone Node-RED instance in the cloud for this. But then you're back to manual management: no central overview of what's running where, version control or SSO. FlowFuse gives us a managed environment where cloud instances and edge devices are visible and controllable from one dashboard.

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ERP-to-machine integration with Node-RED

At one food processor, Node-RED handles the translation between ERP and machines. Purchase orders come in, get translated into production instructions, and the line runs.

They're not using FlowFuse here. Why? They have a dedicated IT/OT person who manages all instances. One person, full overview, no handovers.

It works  but it's fragile. That knowledge sits in one head. When that person is on holiday, nobody touches the system. When they leave, there's a problem. We see this pattern often: Node-RED works fine until it doesn't, and by then migration becomes urgent rather than planned.

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Signs your Node-RED setup is reaching its limits

Over time, we've noticed a few recurring situations that push teams towards FlowFuse:

"Who changed this?" At one customer, this question comes up every single day. Someone modified something, something stopped working, and there's no trace. In standalone Node-RED, there's no version control, no audit trail, no way to look back three months and see what happened. With FlowFuse, every change is logged: who, what, when.

Overwriting each other's work Multiple people working on the same flows. Someone deploys, someone else was also editing. Work gone. In Node-RED, you can't even see that someone else is online. We've seen this happen daily at manufacturing clients. With FlowFuse, you see each other's cursors in real-time, and deployments require approval.

Manual updates across sites One building materials company ran Node-RED on over 100 sites worldwide. Every software change had to be executed manually — a hundred times. That's not scalable. With FlowFuse, you deploy to development, test, approve, and roll out to all production instances in one action.

Access through jumpservers and RDP Excuse us for going a little technical here. At one customer, engineers needed a jumpserver and RDP session before they could even reach their Node-RED instances. Key users couldn't access anything without IT support. FlowFuse offers SSO integration and browser-based access — the right people get to the right instances directly.

We've seen this go wrong firsthand. At one customer, two sites were running different Node-RED flow versions for months, different alarm thresholds and nobody was aware. It caused significant inconsistency in quality comparisons across plants. The kind of problem that's invisible until it does real damage.

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Node-RED vs FlowFuse: when to choose what

Our rule of thumb:

• One instance, one person, one goal? Standalone Node-RED is fine.
• Multiple people, multiple sites, or compliance requirements? FlowFuse saves you time and frustration.
• Not sure how many instances you'll have in a year? Start with Node-RED, but standardise from day one with consistent naming conventions, units and topic structures. That makes a future migration to FlowFuse straightforward rather than a rebuild.

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See it yourself

In our demo factory in Ghent, FlowFuse runs on 20+ instances. If you want to see what this looks like when it's actually running, you're welcome to pay us a visit.

Let us know!

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