materialhandlingupdate
environment. For example, Zebra
has designed some of its mobile
printers not only to be more tolerant
of the chilly temperatures found in
freezer units but also to allow workers to operate them without removing their gloves.
Other design changes include how
the labels themselves are inserted
into the printer. Labels no longer
need to be threaded into the
machine, says Johnson of Zebra.
Instead, they can simply be dropped
in. In addition, many of the labels no
longer have a liner on the back. That
means employees don’t have to
worry about disposing of the liners or
making sure they don’t end up on the
floor where they could pose a slip hazard,
says Brodnar.
ONE DEVICE TO DO IT ALL?
As for what the future holds for mobile
printers, an obvious question is whether
manufacturers will go down the path of
developing multifunctional devices.
That’s been one of the biggest trends in
consumer electronics over the past few
years. For evidence, you need look no farther than the smart phone, which not
only allows users to make calls, but also to
surf the Web, take photos, and even pay
for a cup of coffee.
This kind of device convergence is
already beginning to show up in mobile
printers, according to Intermec. In the
past, printers were connected to a “dumb”
computer terminal that was solely dedi-
cated to running printer software. But
that’s starting to change, says Brodnar. “In
many instances, we are taking some of
those basic applications that reside on a
dumb terminal and moving those inside
the printer in the form of smart printing
applications,” he reports. “Now, the print-
er becomes its own computer. It provides
the printing function, and in many cases,
it provides an input function as well.”
That means that in a pallet-building
application, for example, the printer
could be connected to a bar-code scanner
and/or scale. As the items are scanned and
weighed and the pallet reaches maximum
weight capacity, the printer would print a
label to be applied to the pallet.
But that’s not to say that the market is
progressing toward a device that serves as
both bar-code scanner and printer.
Johnson says that such a device would be
too heavy to comfortably carry.
This leads to an important point.
Unlike the consumer market, where
design changes are made just to make the
device look slicker or cooler, all changes to
an industrial printer must help workers
do their job better. “At the end of the day,
it boils down to workflow productivity,”
says Brodnar. “That’s why customers buy
our products. And to the extent that an
icon or a display screen helps with that
workflow, it will be adopted.” ;
