CASE / CLIENT · STINE SEED
A 30-year seed operation, running on one platform.
Stine Seed Company's business ran on a 30-year AS/400 ERP, roughly one million lines of COBOL spread across hundreds of programs. We rebuilt it, screen by screen, into a modern web platform without losing a decade of business logic.
Client
Stine Seed Company
Sector
Agriculture · Seed
Engagement
Legacy modernization · AS/400 → modern web
Timeline
Jun 2024 – Jun 2026
AS/400 ERP in production
Lines of COBOL mapped
Proof-of-concept
Senior engineers
THE CHALLENGE
Three decades of business logic, locked in COBOL.
A 30-year AS/400 ERP ran the entire business. Roughly one million lines of COBOL, hundreds of programs, and rules that lived only in the source. Modernization was a question of scale, risk, and the people left who could read it.
- •Mission-critical ERP at the center of every business process.
- •Logic buried across hundreds of programs and duplicated across crop years.
- •Green-screen workflows no longer matching how the operation actually runs.
- •A shrinking pool of AS/400 and COBOL talent in the market.
- •Slow, costly enhancements and limited room to scale.
Nine domains in scope
THE APPROACH · MISSION POSSIBLE
Prove it in six months. Then do the rest.
We opened with a focused six-month proof-of-concept: reverse- engineer the COBOL, recover the business rules directly from source, rebuild representative screens in a modern web stack, and validate it weekly with the people who actually use the system.
Six-month proof · weekly demos
The loop
01
Read the COBOL
02
Recover the rules
03
Rebuild by screen
04
Verify in the open
Six months of validated demos answered the question the business needed answered. Stine awarded Kineticloud the full modernization initiative.
THE SOLUTION
Decades of logic, rebuilt as a modern platform.
Over the following 18 months, we rebuilt the ERP screen by screen on a modern web foundation, preserving every rule that mattered, retiring the patterns that didn't, and consolidating duplicated logic into a single, maintainable core.
LEGACY · AS/400
~1M LOC COBOL · 30 YRS
CORE · MODERN WEB
MODULES · 9 DOMAINS
Legacy inventory screen rebuilt as a modern web dashboard
What changed
Modern web architecture
Retires the green-screen workflow in favor of a responsive, browser-based UI built on a maintainable web stack.
Unified processes
One coherent model spans customers, sales, production, inventory, orders, shipments, growers, conditioners, and reporting.
Reduced duplication
Logic repeated across crop years and programs is consolidated into a single source of truth, built to be maintained.
Modern, intuitive UX
Task-oriented screens replace dense terminal forms, same operations, far less friction for the people doing them.
Scalable foundation
A platform built to absorb new modules, new integrations, and the next twenty years of Stine's growth without rewrites.
Knowledge preserved
Three decades of business rules, much of it living only in the source, captured intact in the modern system.
PROOF
Thirty years of COBOL, rebuilt as one modern platform.
The platform now runs production, inventory, and distribution end to end.
THE RESULTS
A 30-year system, carried forward.
- 01Modernized a 30-year mission-critical ERP end to end.
- 02Roughly one million lines of COBOL mapped, with business logic intact.
- 03Decades of accumulated rules rebuilt in a modern web stack.
- 04Continuous stakeholder validation across the full lifecycle.
- 05Delivered in 24 months: 6-month proof-of-concept plus 18-month build.
- 06A scalable foundation for Stine's next generation of growth.
Scope of modernization
- Core operations55%
- Partner & grower-facing25%
- Reporting & analytics20%
Mission Possible.
Five senior engineers · two years · roughly one million lines carried forward.
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