Manufacturing industry is undergoing a major seachange with Enterprise mobility solutions plunging into the market. The most established areas of mobile device deployment in the manufacturing industry are the supply chain division with results that have been realized. Key areas are and remain: the warehouse (inventory management) & logistics (shipping and delivery).
Traditionally, the warehouse/DC functioned with legacy system that had specialized applications to uploaded information from the warehouse to the centralized systems in batch. Warehouses today have moved to WMS (warehouse management systems) applications using wireless LANs with mobile devices to manage all worker activities and record events in real-time. And, a single mobile device today can deliver a variety of applicationsfrom imaging at receiving, to high bay scanning at put away, to voice picking and RFID at the loading dock. The ability of mobile computing to get the right person to the right job at the right time with the right information is a major advantage to improving productivity, accuracy, and reducing labor costs. Modern manufacturing warehouse facilities are hundreds of thousands of square feet in size. Having real-time mobile capability from any point in these facilities allows companies to track both people and assets which helps in improving the efficiency. The manufacturing and warehousing environments are dynamic and change constantly. With optimization through real-time mobile communications, the instantaneous changes can be delivered.
On the logistics front, some fleet units use what is known as passive monitoring, where black boxes are actually wired into trucks, and physically track the trucks using Global Positioning Systems. Other tracking devices like smartphones provide driver interaction with GPS tracking. These are ruggedized handheld units that not only provide GPS tracking of the fleet unit for purposes of the logistics of delivery, but that also incorporate applications like package scanning and signatures. The driver on a delivery route can talk to others over his mobile device with real-time information on what packages are and will be delivered. Having real-time information is better than receiving updates every two hours (as in the past). Equipped with GPS, mobile devices can also assist in optimizing routes.
