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Mobile Devices in a modern Factory
or Warehouse
Mobile computers such as PDA's are now small, fast and very light with battery life
that actually allows you to get some work done! We believe that this type
of device is going to revolutionise the way modern businesses operate. The
traditional form factor for a mobile computer is that of a laptop, but these are
still bulky devices that may be portable but they are most certainly not pocketable!
The idea of a maintenance engineer carrying a laptop around a factory floor to monitor
process alarms is just not a practical one, most people resort to radios or mobile
phones. These solutions work, but require someone to monitor the main SCADA system
and callout alarms to the maintenance engineers on the factory floor. However
this becomes redundant if engineers can monitor system alarms from a PDA connect
via a WiFi network. Alarms can be automatically assigned to available engineers,
who can investigate the problem and acknowledge the alarm once the problem is resolved.
If PDA devices are to big or costly for your needs we can even build systems that
can be loaded on to certain types of mobile. This has the added advantage
that the plant can be monitored remotely if required pretty much any were in the
world using GRPS or 3g with a VPN connection back to the corporate network.
In this way your corporate networks security is never compromised.
Field Workers Mobile Ordering
If your work force often visits client premises for service calls, or to refill
consumables for vending machines etc, you may be able to take advantage of PDA's
in the field.
Imagine a vending machine business with mobile workers visiting clients premises
to refill sandwich or coffee vending machines. With a PDA equipped workforce
all data on product usage and restocking can be captured at the source by the service
technician, this data can be either transmitted to head office by GPRS or 3G immediately
or it could be held on the PDA and downloaded when the service technician returns
to Head Quarters.
Once you have this sort of usage and restocking data you can analyse what products
are selling at particular times of the year, or if a particular vending machine
is profitable etc. The uses for this sort of business intelligence data are
endless, what more, the data is more likely to be correct than if the data was captured
on paper and later transposed on to a computer system.
This type of system would also allow for checks and balances to be builtin to the
system to detect fraud or theft, i.e. if a machine is using more consumables than
it should be for the recorded takings etc.
We can even build this type of system for certain types of mobile phone reducing
the need to issue both a PDA device and mobile phone.
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