Mobile Hardware and Software Innovations in a Warehouse Environment
A warehouse environment is tough and demanding for mobile hardware and software products. Warehouses are in a catch-22 position where there is an increasing pressure to improve data accuracy and at the same time improving transaction efficiency. What are some of the emerging innovations and trends in mobile computing that will address this conundrum? What type of mobile solutions will rule the warehousing landscape 5-6 years from now?
The exact solutions are difficult to predict but here are some technology trends to be observed:
Faster, Smaller and Cheaper Mobile computers: The Moore's law still rules and hand held computers are becoming more powerful. They also pack more memory than ever before. Yet they are becoming smaller and remain cheap compared to their historical prices. More powerful mobile devices implies support for sophisticated applications such as voice engine, RFID infrastructure (mobile sensor server), JVM, Geo-Spatial applications, GPS, etc. The fact that they are cheaper and smaller means that they will be used even more widely.
Pervasive Networking: Wireless Networks are increasing becoming more widespread. Wireless access to a corporate network was earlier only available using a 802.11. Now technologies such as EDGE network, GPRS, WAP and Wi-Max are becoming more and more feasible to access your corporate infrastructure. In future do you really need to setup a Wi-Fi network when other alternatives are available? Possibly not. Verizon is already positioning its Wireless network for manufacturing and logistics environments.
Think about it. This will have a liberating effect on enterprise computing. No longer are you tied to your local wi-fi network. It will be possible to have a seamless access to your corporate applications from anywhere right from your mobile devices.
Emergence of smart phones: Mobile devices and phones are rapidly converging. Already dual mode Wi-Fi/mobile phone are widely available. Due to wide spread usage and high volume many of these phones are a lot cheaper than the comparable industrial scale devices. Should warehouses continue to spend a premium for durability and ruggedness of an industrial device? How much? What are the possible applications for a hand held device with integrated mobile phone capability?
Voice Computing: Voice computing has enormous potential in a warehouse environment. Unfortunately the solutions that are currently available rely on a separate computing middleware to enable voice computing. Though technology is emerging that would allow voice as another sensory medium to interact with the application. The results could be very interesting. Output from a mobile application can be directly fed to a voice engine for delivery on a headphone. Similarly voice engine on the mobile device can directly channel user voice input to the mobile application. Just like a scanner software interprets barcode data and passes the information to the mobile app.
Smart Clients vs Browser based Apps: As connectivity to internet becomes more ubiquitous, internet browser is now the platform of choice for development of desktop applications. Ajit Jaokar on Read/Write Web puts it across succintly:
In the PC world: for desktop apps we need one type of program to run a specific type of application (MS Word to view word documents, Excel to view spreadsheets and so on). In contrast, we can use the browser to view any type of application - i.e. one client for many applications. This makes application development more optimal and less susceptible to the vagaries of software running on the client, in this case the PC.
How about mobile applications for Warehousing needs? With more powerful and sophisticated mobile devices can or should WMS mobile applications be implemented using browser technology? The traditional reasons for having a smart client are as follows:
Smart clients can exploit local device functionality more effectively. This includes mobile device processing power as well as other sensor devices such as barcode scanner, RFID reader etc.
Need for local storage especially when mobile device needs to work in a disconnected mode
A smart client can provide a superior interface for more efficient transaction processing by a warehouse operator
Some of these limitations are serious for a warehouse users and may require a client approach. A possible solution could be a light client application (like Oracle Mobile Sensor Edge Server) runs locally and interacts with a browser application. The issues with usability could be overcome through Ajax and mobile web 2.0. In future could browser emerge as a superior alternative for developing mobile applications for a warehouse?
