BY MITCH MAC DONALD, GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR outbound
iPads and pedometers?
NO ONE WOULD BE SURPRISED TO HEAR THAT BRENT
Beabout, Office Depot’s vice president of global network strategy and
transportation, considers technology to be the driving force behind
ongoing advances in supply chain management. What might come as
a surprise, however, is the type of technology he’s talking about.
In a recent interview with DC VELOCITY, Beabout noted that some
of the most successful implementations he’s seen have centered not
on specialized logistics technologies, but on widely available “garden
variety” devices. As a case in point, he cited a project in which his
company “used straight off-the-shelf GPSs from Best Buy to
enhance the functionality of [its] warehouse management systems.”
That comment was still front of mind when we came across the
story of Tim Markley, the president of Markley
Enterprises in Elkhart, Ind.
Markley Enterprises is a manufacturer of
sales and marketing support materials like in-store and trade show displays. Approximately
10 years ago, the company expanded its business to include warehousing and inventory
management services for its customers. At first,
it used a proprietary distribution system to
manage these activities. But over time, it
became clear that the system was no longer
keeping up with the company’s needs.
That led Markley to replace it with
RedPrairie’s On-Demand WMS. Since implementing the warehouse management system,
the company has seen significant performance
gains in all of the critical areas of its operation. Its inventory accuracy rate, for instance, now stands at over 99 percent. The company
has also seen the time needed to pick and pack an order drop by
almost a third.
But it wasn’t the WMS alone that helped Markley Enterprises
achieve these performance breakthroughs. Part of the credit goes to
some decidedly garden variety technologies the company is using in
conjunction with the WMS—specifically, Apple iPad devices.
Earlier this year, the company equipped employees in its pick and
pack operation with iPads. When the WMS receives an order, it automatically transmits the order information—including item location
and quantity—to the iPad of the worker nearest the item. In the past,
workers had to travel to a work station to pick up paper lists with
their picking instructions. Eliminating that step has cut travel time
drastically. “We put pedometers on our people, and we actually saw
steps decrease by 30 percent with the iPad,” Markley reports.
The new system has brought other benefits as
well, he adds. For one thing, it’s greener. “We
Markley is already looking for
other ways to integrate the iPads
into his company’s operations.
For example, he’s currently
exploring opportunities to use
the devices for workforce management. “In addition to what we’re already
doing, we are looking at a cloud application
using the iPad to capture and log employee production time,” he says.
Granted, iPads, GPSs, and pedometers may
not be the first thing that comes to mind when
we think of technologies to enhance logistics
operations. But as Markley’s and Beabout’s
experiences show, sometimes there’s a big payoff to thinking outside the box.
Group Editorial Director
