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Rise of user-friendly devices propels strategic use of wireless technology
By Jim Fulcher, contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/1/2007
Nearly half of all large U.S. and European businesses currently have at least one project involving wireless technology under way, according to research by Boston-based Yankee Group. Most of these initiatives involve point solutions that address a single problem, but Eugene Signorini, Yankee Group's VP of enterprise applications & mobile solutions, already sees that changing.
“Ultimately, mobile solutions will impact business in much the same way that the Internet has,” says Signorini. “Just as Internet technology has become part of the underlying infrastructure for most IT and business processes, mobile technologies will pervade all aspects of an organization's dealings with employees, customers, and suppliers.”
Kevin Prouty, senior director of manufacturing solutions at Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola's Enterprise Mobility business—formerly Symbol Technologies—believes the day when mobile technology becomes part of a typical enterprise's IT fabric is closer than most people realize, thanks to the emergence of software like Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system.
Prouty believes Windows Mobile will do for mobile devices what the standard version of Windows did for PCs: create an industry standard that both hardware suppliers and application developers can rally around. He says most of Motorola's mobile devices now run on Windows Mobile, and application vendors are writing mobile applications for the platform.
The result, Prouty predicts, will be a proliferation of mobile devices based on standard protocols, and designed for specific types of users.
Motorola already offers these products:
- MC 9000 rugged mobile devices, suited for production operators and warehouse workers; and
- MC 35, a rugged smart phone that enables bar-code scanning as well as voice or electronic messaging—now popular with engineers.
Motorola also developed the Mobility Services Platform as a means of managing multiple mobile devices and applications from a central location. This platform ensures users get the exact information they need to do their jobs—and nothing more—through mobile devices.
For instance, if a quality engineer uses an MC 35 to scan a bar code, the data center will load a series of quality applications to that device. If, however, a line operator with an MC 9000 scans a bar code, it receives an error-proofing application.
Creative plant processes
“New applications such as plant maintenance and asset management are springing up,” Prouty says. “Instead of a clipboard with a maintenance checklist on it, a user has a fully functional MRO sheet on their mobile device. It's a dynamic task list that lets them immediately check things off and have the results uploaded to the central system.”
Warren Sumner, a VP with real-time supply chain execution and reverse logistics solution provider ClearOrbit, agrees that ease of use is critical to the expanded uses of wireless devices across the enterprise. Sumner argues that a transition from a green screen-type computing environment to one of mobile computing using wireless devices capable of browsing the Internet goes a long way toward changing people's willingness to adopt new technology.
“The ability to show Web pages or items for a warehouse employee to pick, in color, on a handheld device makes the application much more appealing,” Sumner says. “There's been a movement to create software with plant-floor workers in mind. The applications are much more user-friendly and more intuitive, so there's less training involved.”
In the end, though, the real driving force behind mobile computing in the enterprise is manufacturers' increasing demand for performance improvement.
Dorfman Pacific, a Stockton, Calif.-based supplier of headwear and handbags, saw tremendous performance improvement upon implementing wireless technology in its warehouse.
“Our warehouse grew quickly and we had shifted from selling primarily to mom-and-pop stores to selling to big customers such as JC Penny. The result was we needed a great deal of temporary seasonal warehouse labor,” says Mark Dulle, director of IT and technical services at Dorfman Pacific.
The problem was the company's paper-based warehouse activities were inefficient and time- consuming, Dulle says. Dorfman Pacific also wanted to make better use of zones in its warehouse because, as Dulle says, it simply isn't practical to drive carts around a 275,000-square-foot facility looking for product.
To remedy the situation, Dorfman had RedLine Solutions—a systems integrator specializing in bar code, radio frequency, and automated data capture systems—deploy rugged mobile computers and a Wi-Fi network infrastructure from Motorola's Enterprise Mobility business at the Stockton warehouse for picking, packing, and shipping applications. Dorfman Pacific now uses the wireless solution to track bar-coded products and validate material movement—including through receiving and receiving inspection, put-away, picking and packing, shipment confirmation, and cycle counting.
“With the Motorola enterprise mobility system, our warehouse is now entirely paperless, resulting in streamlined processes and improved inventory accuracy,” says Dulle. “We're at a 99-percent quality level, and we're able to handle approximately twice the number of orders during peak periods while reducing labor costs by nearly 30 percent. We've been able to save $250 million in temp labor so far using the solution.”
Keeping in contact
Warehouse and sales applications are the predominant uses of mobile technology for customers of the Siemens Enterprise Communications business unit. But Luc Roy, a VP with the open communications solution provider, says companies see value in expanding their use of mobile solutions.
“There's an improvement to be gained simply by being able to remain in contact with people as they move around the enterprise,” Roy says. “But there's considerably more to it than that. When people are at their desks, they use desktop applications. When they move around, however, you want them to be able to take those applications with them so they can make decisions and do work away from the desk. That's where the importance of wireless devices comes in.”
The savings, of course, can be substantial. Consider, for instance, the case of Mt. Olive Pickle Co., a Mount Olive, N.C.-based company that packs and ships more than 90 million jars of processed and fresh pack pickles, relishes, and peppers annually.
To reduce annual maintenance costs for its production and packaging equipment inside the factory—as well as more than 1,200 fiberglass and plastic brine vats distributed around the grounds—Mt. Olive company management planned to create a paperless, mobile work-order entry system for real-time monitoring of vats and tanks.
The wireless advantage
Mt. Olive also wanted to leverage its investment in wireless LAN infrastructure by upgrading its Motorola two-way radio system to a wireless VoIP solution to reduce communications costs and resolve persistent coverage issues, says Dan Bowen, VP of finance for the company, and the person who oversees technology initiatives. To meet those goals, Mt. Olive implemented Siemens' HiPath Wireless integrated WLAN suite, including HiPath Wireless access points and Scalence W rugged access points managed by HiPath wireless controllers.
Once the WLAN was installed, Mt. Olive was able to deploy a PDA-based work-order system for maintenance staff. Members of the maintenance staff were also equipped with wireless VoIP phones to replace the Motorola two-way radios.
The ROI from the wireless applications paid for the project within the first year, Bowen says. The entire project cost was less than $250,000, and annual savings from the new systems were well above that.
For example, use of the paperless work-order system tremendously reduces the time it takes for a work order to flow through the proper channels, Bowen says. With some 70,000 work orders being processed each year, a savings of even 10 minutes on each one translates to a $1-million savings over three years.
That's in addition to a $100,000 savings calculated over the next three years using automated monitoring. Instead of requiring maintenance personnel to walk to various areas of the facility to check water levels and status of equipment such as monitor pumps, they now monitor systems remotely, receiving alerts in real time when things go wrong, Bowen says.
“We are totally wireless, fence-to-fence. It gives us the ability to get information to the right people at the right time so they can make the right decisions, and, in turn, make the company as profitable as it can be,” Bowen says. “I think we have a technological advantage over our competitors, and wireless helped us achieve that.”
Eliminating processes
Some forward-thinking companies have been able to use wireless technology to nearly eliminate some processes.
ArvinMeritor—a Troy, Mich.-based, $8-billion global supplier of a broad range of integrated systems, modules, and components to the motor vehicle industry—is a case-in-point. As a key supplier to automotive OEMs such as DaimlerChrysler, GM, Ford, and Volvo, ArvinMeritor needed a solution that allowed it to automate data capture and shop-floor processes while avoiding the pick, pack & ship processes mandated by standard ERP solutions.
“Customers such as ArvinMeritor want to minimize—if not eliminate—the warehouse and ship as much as possible directly from manufacturing,” says ClearOrbit's Sumner. “ArvinMeritor in particular uses wireless handheld scanners to sequence goods on a pallet, and as goods are stacked, they get labeled and shipped. While it eliminates the time-consuming process of putting goods away in the warehouse only to later pick, pack, and ship them, it also minimizes the need for warehouse space.”
ArvinMeritor implemented the Oracle 11i enterprise solution from enterprise solution provider Oracle simultaneously with ClearOrbit's Advanced Shipping Methods software to gain advanced supply chain capabilities. Consequently, ArvinMeritor has reduced its transaction time and the data entry required of its employees because the ClearOrbit solution automates numerous transactions. A shipping process that used to require manual entry on six screens, for example, now uses just two screens—both driven by RF guns that read automatically customized labels.
“Many times we receive EDI transactions from our customers, and we then have to sequence our products,” says Jay McLean, VP of IT in the Commercial Vehicle Systems Group at ArvinMeritor. “Our customers expect the products they ordered to be delivered to their plant in the sequence they identified to us on a just-in-time [JIT] basis.”
Use of the ClearOrbit and Oracle solutions helps ArvinMeritor lower costs and reduce inventory in the supply chain, as well as meet JIT requirements. But it also enables critical product-assembly verification.
“The biggest thing we're trying to do within our manufacturing applications is make sure wedon't have any disruptions—either to our external or internal customers,” McLean says. “That means that as product is moving through our facilities, it's assembled properly with the proper components, and the ClearOrbit solution is the tool we use to ensure that the right components are in the right product as it moves down the line. In the end, we're making sure the customer gets the product they want in the sequence they want without any disruptions.” And they're doing it without wires, which just may be the wave of the future.
