BY DAVID MALONEY, SENIOR EDITOR
MOBILE TECH
technologyreview
Are smartphones and tablets
ready for prime time (in the DC)?
Their low price point has some
companies considering
adopting consumer mobile
devices for use in the DC. But
it’s not clear these devices are
quite up to the task yet.
WITH THE EXPLOSION IN THE USE OF SMARTPHONES AND
consumer tablets, it was probably only a matter of time before these
devices found their way into the distribution center. For workers
who have eagerly embraced these technologies in their daily lives,
bringing them into the workplace wouldn’t seem like much of a
stretch. “People are more connected today,” says Jim Plas, vice presi-
dent of Xplore Technologies, a manufacturer of rugged tablet com-
puters. “We have a younger generation of workers who are used to
being digitally connected.”
But it’s not just a matter of familiarity. Cost enters into it as well.
While industrial-grade handhelds and tablets have been available for
years, they’re much more expensive than their mass-market counter-
parts. So it’s not surprising that companies would be tempted to
try using off-the-shelf technology—the kind of stuff that can
be purchased at the local Best Buy or Walmart—in their dis-
tribution operations. But is that a smart strategy?
Well, it depends on how and where they’re used.
For example, take a supervisor who works mainly
in an office but occasionally carries a tablet out
into the warehouse to deal with a problem on
the spot. In that case, a consumer tablet would
probably fill the bill nicely.
It’s a different story for workers whose
duties take them outdoors or who spend
much of their day on the dock or in
the aisles of a DC. If the devices they
use will routinely be exposed to
heat, cold, rain, vibration, dust,
drops, or in the case of cold storage
facilities, condensation, companies
should steer clear of consumer-grade electronics. They simply
won’t stand up to the punishment, experts say.
RUGGED FOR A REASON
Consider, for example, the tablet
computers used by forklift opera-
tors. Although mass-market tablets might be
able to provide the necessary computing power and func-
tionality, it’s doubtful they could survive the day-to-day rigors of the
