By David Arkles, ANZ regional sales director, Zebra Technologies
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a technological revolution and finding the right investment opportunity in IoT is becoming even more difficult to pin down. Some businesses in the Logistics sector are making everything ‘intelligent’ while others are choosing only a few things to connect. But what is the right choice and where does the investment value lie?
Mobility is one trend that is growing from strength to strength, with businesses looking to mobile solutions to help field workers operate at their peak efficiency. By empowering field workers with enterprise asset intelligence through the use of mobile computers, they can react to situations in any part of the value chain in real time.
Australian businesses have been keen to join the mobility trend and IoT revolution – with a recent global study by Forester Consulting revealing Australian and New Zealand businesses ranked mobile computing, Wi-Fi tracking and GPS tracking as the top three most important elements of IoT solutions.
Currently the uptake of mobility solutions in Australia has been targeted at crucial areas to concentrate investment and innovation with a particular focus on logistics in healthcare, agriculture, mining, and transport.[1]
Choosing the right technology
Businesses are already seeing the benefit of a mobile workforce as it raises productivity and delivers better customer experiences. However, in order to see these benefits businesses need three important tools to ensure their field service teams are doing their jobs efficiently and effectively – the right mobile devices, connectivity and business-grade application that help them work smart.
In choosing mobile devices for a field service workforce, the options typically are consumer-grade devices—such as smartphones and tablet computers—and ruggedized enterprise-grade handheld computers and peripherals. While consumer devices may offer lower initial costs, they often wind up increasing the total cost of ownership (TCO) over time. Mobile devices invariably take a beating in the field so consumer devices often have high failure rates. Ruggedized enterprise-grade mobile computers significantly outperform smartphones and tablets in terms of maximizing reliability and uptime. They also provide superior data capture capabilities with purpose-built features like integrated barcode scanners, near field communications (NFC), industrial-grade battery life, touchscreen technology and RFID readers.
Real-Time Connectivity
To deliver the gold standard of first-visit fixes, field service workers must be connected to the resources they need exactly when they need them. They need real-time access to the best information, plus the ability to collaborate with their company’s product experts and to communicate with customers en route. To perform to the highest standards, they also need high-speed, always-on connectivity.
For example, delivery personnel using the right enterprise mobile computer will be able to communicate with the distribution centre, the destination and other delivery personnel to access corporate resources in real-time even when they are out in the field. This information can help increase efficiency, lower costs and reduce downtime.
Good for customers and staff…
Building intelligence in this way helps not just with where things are and what they do; it also helps material handling firms provide a better service to their customers. If inbound products and resources can be tagged and monitored, and outbound products monitored in the same way, it’s much easier to track each product’s movement through the system analysing the time taken and the locations visited. When such data is run against things like shelf-lives for perishable goods, efficiency is maximised and wastage minimised. This way, customers can also receive exactly what they want, precisely when they want it.
There are safety implications too. A piece of equipment fitted with an RFID tag can be instructed only to work within a certain area or by authorised staff. It can also be programmed to lock out users who don’t have the required certification, protecting the individual and also protecting the health and safety standards of the organisation.
… and good for the brand too
Mobile technology presents an exciting future for enterprise asset intelligence (EAI) where previously siloed departments can work together through integrated software to provide more visibility to business processes. Once you start to look at things in this way, you realise that smart equipment isn’t just easier to find, control and secure. Nor is it just doing a better job for your customers (great though that is). It’s also helping to protect your brand – because it’s now part of a big, interconnected and complete picture. Every tool, device and process in your infrastructure is visible in a way like never before, enabling material handlers to supervise and coordinate everything upstream and downstream, streamlining and optimising, so that the values for which you stand by and for which you’re known aren’t only maintained, but enhanced.
Make everything intelligent, make everything visible, make everything…contextually aware
Making a device intelligent in this way makes it contextually aware. This greater level of intelligence links to systems which can then prompt events to happen based on the contextual information driven by auto-ID – effectively enabling relationships between devices to trigger onward activities and events. The benefits are clear; there is more visibility in the materials handling environment, cost efficiency can be improved and your customers’ needs are kept at the heart of the operation, so they’ll notice the difference too.
[1] http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/4/21/technology/cracking-disruption-code-survivors-guide