inbound
app-happy
air cargo has its rewards
There won’t be nearly as many women as men at the Mid-America Trucking
Show, but it sounds like the ladies are definitely planning to make their presence
known. The nonprofit association Women In Trucking has lined up an array of
events at the show, which takes place in Louisville, Ky., March 25–27.
“Salute to the Women Behind the Wheel” will begin at noon on Saturday, March
27. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Administrator Anne
Ferro will welcome the drivers and assist in honoring those who have reached
safety milestones. Female professional drivers also will gather to pose for a photo,
hoping to beat the Guinness World Record of 416, set in Europe in 2004.
Music will be a big part of the celebration. The featured performer is
singer/songwriter Rob Anthony, who wrote “Down the Road,” about a professional driver’s longing for his family and love for the freedom of the highway. Alyson
Burke and Andrea Warner will perform Terry Wooley’s “Lady in the Driver’s Seat.”
The song, which praises the quiet strength of women behind the wheel as they
deliver their freight each day, can be heard at www.womenintrucking.org.
The event is open to all female professional drivers as well as all members of
Women In Trucking. Attendees must register at www.salute2women.com before
the show.
women in trucking: this song’s for you
A warehouse worker walks over
to a picking location and
instead of reaching for an
industrial scanner, whips out
an iPhone to photograph the
package’s bar code. As improbable as that might sound, Steve
Banker of ARC Advisory
Group says he’s heard reports
of at least one company that’s
using a low-cost iPhone app to
scan bar codes in its warehouse.
Writing in a recent newsletter,
Banker said the company in
question was experimenting
with an app designed for the
consumer market that it had
reconfigured to enter the bar-code number into the company’s WMS.
Is it really feasible? The ARC
analyst said he did a little nosing around and found that user
reviews of the iPhone scanners
were largely unfavorable, in
part because of poor camera
focus on the first phone models. The new, improved camera
in the iPhone 3GS model has
made a difference, but reliability still fell short of the mark,
especially in low light conditions. “Simply put, an industri-al-strength bar-code scanner
has to be nearly flawless,”
Banker wrote.
Along with the reliability
issue, Banker listed several
other reasons why iPhones
were ill-suited to bar-code
scanning applications: Reads
take too long, the camera has to
be lined up carefully with the
bar code, an expensive iPhone
probably wouldn’t survive a 4-
foot drop onto a concrete floor,
and finally: “Do you really want
your workers off in the stacks
surfing the Web or calling their
friends?”
