Top 10 Mobile Manufacturing Solutions

The warehouse is a core operational area for manufacturers and wholesale distributors. Every minute of every day, there is constant movement of materials in, out and through this crucial business area — from raw materials waiting to be assembled or manufactured into finished goods, to finished goods awaiting shipment to distributors, retailers or end-users. The efficiency of this function is critical to the health of your business and your ability to compete. Anything less than peak efficiency translates into longer cycle times, errors and higher labor costs — which translate into a higher cost of doing business.
With a mobile solution in your warehouse, electronic forms can replace paper in receiving, quality control, put-away, replenishment, picking, packing and other warehouse processes. Not only are electronic orders sent instantly to the device, but the ability to scan the bar codes, direct part marks or RFID tags on inventory ensures that the right materials are stored on the right shelves — and the right products are picked to either fulfill the right order or replenish raw materials on the assembly line. The real-time processes provide real-time inventory visibility, which in turn supports just-in-time (JIT) inventory practices. And when workers need an immediate answer to a question, two-way radios or voice-enabled mobile computers provide an instant voice connection via push-to-talk voice capability.
As a result, stocking inventory levels and the associated capital requirements are reduced. Since less warehouse storage space is required, inventory storage costs are also reduced — and valuable square footage is available for additional manufacturing or other business operations.

Mobility can protect against one of the most expensive events in a manufacturing plant —unplanned downtime. An eKanBan solution enables manufacturers to cost-effectively place a wireless call button at every station. Workers no longer need to leave their stations to locate and press a call button, and the call for inventory is transmitted instantly to a mobile computer on your forklifts, allowing forklift operators to respond almost instantly. This single mobility application typically results in a dramatic 90 percent decease in response time — as well as an increase in operator productivity.
In addition, the ability to view real-time Visual Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Manufacturing Execution System (MES) information on a mobile handheld device combines with advances in Voice over WLAN (VoWLAN) technology, allowing manufacturers to give operators and engineers converged voice and data devices that provide better control over the health of the equipment that is at the heart of your business — the production line machinery. Operators no longer need to leave the machinery to travel to a wired workstation to input critical machine status information. Engineers are no longer tied to the control room to monitor machine status — they can now receive and acknowledge alarms wherever they happen to be.
Production and employee safety levels are improved. Potential equipment issues are spotted and addressed instantly — for example, an emergency electronic work order or a push-to-talk voice call can ensure a prompt response from the nearest technician. Finally, since bottlenecks, variances and more are instantly visible, managers can take action before yield is impacted.

Regulatory requirements related to track and trace are on the rise for manufacturers, rippling into the need to create an end-to-end pedigree for your products — an undertaking that can be both a costly and time-consuming. Regardless of whether you are involved in discrete or process manufacturing, mobility enables the nearly automatic real-time tracking of parts and ingredients at any point in the manufacturing process, or after delivery to the customer — all with just a split second scan of a bar code, direct part mark or RFID tag.

The result is a highly accurate and granular track and trace capability that allows food and beverage, pharmaceutical, automotive and other manufacturers to comply with government regulations without adding a lot of process — or cost. In addition, in the event of faulty or contaminated materials, targeted recalls of only affected product can be conducted quickly and efficiently, protecting consumer safety, brand equity and revenues

Tracking and maintaining the many assets in a manufacturing plant can be a time-consuming and costly endeavor — from roll cages and pallets to totes and tools. By placing RFID tags on these assets, inventory counts and the location of all your assets is always visible, without any worker involvement — no time-consuming manual inventory counts required. Accountability is improved, theft is reduced, and real-time asset visibility not only ensures the availability required to keep business moving throughout the day, but also helps reduce asset inventory levels — and the associated capital and carrying costs.

In addition, mobility can ensure that proper maintenance is performed on time, extending asset lifecycle and further protecting against unplanned downtime. Assets can be automatically scheduled for maintenance based on maintenance history. With a mobile computer in hand, engineers can receive electronic work orders on the date service is required, and can access maintenance history, manuals and other required information with the press of a few buttons. In addition, real-time visibility into future maintenance schedules helps ensure that the right tools and parts are available on the scheduled service date. And the need to process paperwork, hunt for files and more is eliminated, improving productivity — engineers now have the time to service more equipment per day.

Customer and business demands are greater than ever in today’s marketplace. Custom products must be manufactured at record speed, while the struggle for competitive pricing has resulted in outsourcing to vendors that may be located across town or around the world — adding a new level of complexity to the quality function. When quality applications are deployed on handheld mobile devices, the speed and accuracy of your quality checks are improved, and your quality processes are standardized — regardless of whether product is manufactured in your own plants or in the plant of an upstream or downstream vendor. The automation of the capture of quality data enables manufacturers to achieve Six Sigma quality, virtually ensuring that your customer receives the right product, manufactured the right way, every time, improving customer satisfaction — as well as customer retention. In addition, the ability to catch quality issues early, even in complex distributed global manufacturing supply chains, helps contain the cost of a quality event by minimizing wasted labor, materials and equipment time.
Last, mobility improves quality beyond the production line. Since a mobile computer allows the verification of every step in virtually any process, you can prevent errors throughout the business. Accurate putaway and picking ensures that inventory is always readily available and orders are fulfilled correctly. The ability to specify required fields on an electronic form ensures that sales orders contain all the data required for prompt processing. And the ability to present a checklist of steps on a mobile device helps guide technicians through maintenance and repair routines, ensuring accuracy and improving accountability.
The result is a new level of quality throughout all your operations, reducing costly re-work and product recalls — and ultimately protecting customer service and satisfaction levels

Without true labor costs, you have no visibility into the real cost of your products. How much time does a task really take? Where are your front-line employees spending their time during the workday?
Are workers executing tasks that aren’t visible — time that should be rolled into the cost of your product? Are workers spending non-billable time on tasks that could be eliminated, improving the overall utilization of your workforce? To answer these questions, many manufacturers have spent tens of millions of dollars on ERP systems to obtain true labor costs — yet today, most companies still utilize standard cost estimates to price products and invoice customers.
Mobility allows manufacturers to address these issues by extending the existing time and attendance (T&A) system right to the hands of operators on the plant floor. Now, operators can enter start and stop times for specific jobs, effectively punching in and out throughout the day without ever leaving their station. The ability to track granular time-on-task provides actual costs, enabling the true reconciliation of production hours with job costing and payroll. A single set of labor cost data in both the T&A and ERP systems allows manufacturers to replace standard costs with real costs. The result is the accurate product pricing required to: enable more competitive pricing, protect profitability; substantially reduce accounting administration and rationalize product lines by true profitability.

You are fully dependent upon your sales force to drive revenues, so it is critical that this highly mobile workforce is as efficient as possible.
When your salesforce carries an integrated mobile voice and data device with a real-time connection to your back-end business systems, everything required to close deals on the spot is in hand. Salespeople can easily check inventory and pricing, capture a signature, submit the order in real time — and with a mobile payment card reader, even process payments instantly. Trips back to the office to look up information in the computer and time spent contacting the customer a second or third time are eliminated, increasing productivity and enabling your sales staff to make more customer visits per day — and close more sales per month. The result is a reduction in sales overhead — and an increase in sales dollars per sales hour

You are fully dependent upon your sales force to drive revenues, so it is critical that this highly mobile workforce is as efficient as possible. When your salesforce carries an integrated mobile voice and data device with a real-time connection to your back-end business systems, everything required to close deals on the spot is in hand. Salespeople can easily check inventory and pricing, capture a signature, submit the order in real time — and with a mobile payment card reader, even process payments instantly. Trips back to the office to look up information in the computer and time spent contacting the customer a second or third time are eliminated, increasing productivity and enabling your sales staff to make more customer visits per day — and close more sales per month. The result is a reduction in sales overhead — and an increase in sales dollars per sales hour.In the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, a mobile computer provides direct store delivery (DSD) drivers with the technology needed to streamline the entire delivery process. A quick scan of the products as they are unloaded from the truck provides a double check of the accuracy of the order and instantly updates inventory.
A quick scan of returns and additions enables the creation of an accurate invoice, right on the spot. Drivers can capture and transmit a signature for proof of delivery or process a payment card on site with the addition of a mobile payment card reader, dramatically reducing the order-to-cash cycle time, improving cash flow and reducing administrative processing requirements back in the office.
Last, in the pharmaceutical and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries, salespeople can easily scan bar codes or RFID tags on drug samples or food and beverages, providing cost-effective compliance with government regulations for track and trace — without adding costs or diminishing staff productivity.

Your field workers are responsible for the single-most important interface in your enterprise — the daily interaction with your customers. The efficiency and effectiveness of this workforce can have a tremendous impact on the health of your business. The level of service that these workers deliver will drive your sales and customer retention levels up — or down. And the productivity levels of these
workers will drive your costs up — or down.
A mobile device can eliminate the gap between the voice and data networks in the office and your field workforce, greatly improving the efficiency of workers who repair product or perform inspections and maintenance. Repair technicians can receive electronic work orders as well as access service history, service level agreements and a list of appropriate products to cross-sell and up-sell, from after-market items to a higher-level service contract — eliminating a large volume of paperwork. The ability to allow this typical cost center to sell increases revenues. The ability to capture and transmit an electronic signature or process a credit or debit card (via a snap-on payment card reader) in realtime speeds invoicing and payment cycle times, improving cash flow. And integrated GPS provides a variety of locationbased applications that further improve productivity, such as real-time directions that help technicians arrive on time despite a road closure or traffic jam.

Regardless of whether your managers are responsible for the plant, your salesforce or your field workforce, they need access to a wealth of information in order to act as effectively as possible. With a robust mobile device, you can extend lean concepts to management. Now, plant managers can access productivity applications such as email, plant messages and alerts as well as back-end systems that provide a window into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and more. By mobilizing the many critical plant management applications, managers can remain out on the plant floor, where they are most effective — yet the information required to make the best decisions possible is never more than a few seconds away. As a result, plant managers are more effective, able to accomplish more throughout the workday as well as react faster to changing plant conditions.
In addition, sales managers can monitor actual sales and updated sales forecasts in real time. This information enables tighter management of inventory, increasing inventory turns and reducing inventory holding costs as well as enabling better scheduling of labor to prevent the high cost of overtime.