As the cost of rugged handhelds has reduced and mobile communications have improved, you see them deployed in more and more applications across different industries. By giving the worker direct access to pertinent information and allowing them to conduct business at the point of a transaction or information capture, you increase efficiency and liberate your staff.
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Studying how people work and how we can improve efficiency reminds me of the old time and motion studies that were so popular in the mid 1950’s. These white coated figures would roam factories with their stop watches. The purpose of a time and motion study would be used to reduce the number of motions in performing a task in order to increase productivity and even reduce staff numbers. No wonder they were viewed as the enemy by the employees. It conjures up the image of Peter Sellers as the shop steward in the British comedy called I’m Alright Jack.
Thankfully things have moved on since then. However, I remember that during the recession of the 1990’s a new business buzzword appeared on the landscape of best practice - ‘downsizing’. I think this meant different things to different businesses, but ultimately it was about reducing a company’s head count. To add a positive spin on it came ‘rightsizing’ which is in fact downsizing, but no doubt made the companies feel better.
” A UK-based research group predicts there will be 430,000 retail self-checkout terminals (self-checkouts) in use globally by 2014, four times the current number, and North America will account for more than half of the units.
The forecast is based on a study by Retail Banking Research, which said there were 92,600 self-service checkouts in use globally by the end of 2008, about 25 percent more than were in service at the end of 2007. The study focused only on self-checkouts used in supermarkets and other retail establishments.” Read the full story.
Maxatec has signed an agreement with Group Sense Mobile-Tech Limited “GSML”, Hong Kong, to distribute its range of mobile computing devices in the United Kingdom.
Group Sense Group, ISO-9001 and ISO-14000 certified company, was founded in 1988 and is now one of the leading manufacturers of electronic dictionaries and other rugged handheld information devices. In 1996, the Group launched the world’s first PDA device operating on a Chinese language platform. Since 2000, the Group has been manufacturing the Xplore series of PDAs, featuring magnesium cases, bilingual user interface and ‘open-platform’ operating system to enable companies to develop customised applications.
Picture this scenario, a small business that makes things, takes orders, packs them and ships them; usually starts out with quite basic processes and for a while, they fulfil the purpose albeit just adequately.
The owner manager feels in control as he oversees the orders, adjusts his stock position and then coordinates delivery to the customer; he instructs his dedicated staff every step of the way. But what happens as his company grows? Enter technology.
Not so long ago charity shops tended to be no more than glorified jumble sale outlets, so the fact that they have survived so long was more to do with the efforts of the persistent bargain hunter and charity supporter rather than smart merchandising. To think that the first charity shop or second hand clothing shop was set up by the Salvation Army in the 19th century. However, modern charity shops did not appear until after world war two with the first of these being operated by Oxfam in 1947.
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“Sarbanes-Oxley requires companies to accurately show that they really own the assets they say they do, and that equipment holding financial data is controlled and secured. Similarly, businesses covered under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) also have to keep IT assets under tight control.”
“The consortium, made up of leading North American-based financial institutions, tech vendors, independent research organizations and government agencies, has been working to develop standards for RFID-based IT asset tracking systems, including pre-tagging of equipment at the manufacturer.” Read the full story.
Today the mobile computing device seems to be the ubiquitous end point for so many applications, from carrying out transactions to downloading business software. Now it’s reaching across many vertical sectors such as healthcare. Nurses, for instance, can use iphone applications to find out what to do about patient symptoms, measure and record blood glucose, insulin and medication etc.
Some markets and companies have remained fairly unaffected by the crisis and are even expanding their operations while others have been forced to scale down their activities. This has meant that many businesses have been forced to consider outsourcing their logistics and distribution functions in order to cut costs. The challenge here is who do you outsource to? First off it is important to carry out in depth due diligence before choosing your warehousing and distribution partner. Get a feel for their experience both good and bad. A potential warehouse and distribution partner needs to be able to demonstrate real knowledge and experience.
The new APEX 4 battery operated portable thermal printer is the third in the APEX range of lightweight, wearable printers for mobile computing applications and enhances the recently introduced 2″ and 3″ portable receipt printer products.
The APEX branded printers use a flash based, highly integrated CPU and the print mechanism is a new clamshell design from SEIKO that has a rated print speed of 3 inches per second.
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