Getting Fat is Not a Good Idea – For your Personal Health or Your Warehouse

This is probably the last place you thought you’d see this kind of article. As I have progressed into my fifties, I have found myself packing on a little extra padding.  It’s probably not a good idea.  Getting fat can lead to any number of consequences, from high blood pressure to Type II Diabetes.  It can have an impact your mobility, your quality of life and can even lead to losing it altogether. Not a pretty thought.

How do you prevent yourself from getting fat? Well, we all know the ideal ways of staying trim, from eating sensibly, staying away from fast foods and junk. It also requires one to increase their mobility; from walking the dog around the block, to a couple of hours in the gym, a few laps in the pool or a few miles on a bike.

When you consider the same in the warehouse, fat is something that should be avoided.

With many organizations getting on-board the Android device train, there is a tendency to consider moving away from legacy solutions and develop thick/fat Android homegrown applications.  

There are many reasons why companies consider it. Let’s go over some of the reasons and why they might not be the best course of action:

• If we build our own application, I can direct my in-house developers to customize it any way I want

While this is true, there are many dangers and pitfalls when developing in-house FAT applications:

1. What is your budget for designing this application? Does your budget account for modifications or changes? Does it account for all the issues below?
2. Is mobile software your core competency? Designing your own thick client for a mobile device requires developers that understand the issues that are commonplace when using mobile devices, including barcode scanner integration, screen sizes, battery power consumption where radios and displays are concerned
3. Hiring developers to design your application? The average software developer contract is about 2 years.  If your developer leaves, who is going to continue to support your solution when it requires mods?
4. Changing Devices/Form Factors?  If you have designed an application for a specific manufacturer/model device, what needs to be done if you choose to move to something new? Who is going to do it? What happens when APIs are updated? New features added?
5. Will an OS update break my application?
6. Will your thick application contain all the features of the current application at initial release? If not, how many releases will it take to get to par with current apps in use? Will you need to keep all of them running in the meanwhile?

• I don’t want to pay for software licenses and support

     It is far more expensive to pay for engineering, software developers and support than it is to pay for thin client applications.

• I want to take advantage of the Android operating system to design my application with a more user-friendly interface for my warehouse staff

Using products like Zebra’s All-Touch Terminal Emulation, you can make character-based emulation look and function like Android applications:

                                               Before:                                                                    After:

                                             

All modernization is local to the device.  There is no server required, keeping wireless impact unchanged and interfaces are quick and snappy.

• I want my WMS Applications to access more information.  I want my workers to be able to do more with the technology 

With All-Touch Terminal Emulation, you can now access other data and new functionality without making modifications to your back end systems:

                                          Flat Terminal Emulation                                           Enhanced TE with Photo Database

                                                             

This example is a modernized Telnet Screen, while also accessing a Web Server with product SKUs and corresponding photos.

By sticking to your thin application TE infrastructure, you can take advantage of the following benefits:

1. You protect the value of many years and dollars invested in system customization.
2. Using All-Touch TE for your Android or Windows 10 devices, You open the door to modernization of your applications without going back to the drawing board to re-invent the wheel.
3. You can design your application screens and pull data from other sources to improve effectiveness of your warehouse worker (photos of items picked, for example)
4. You can take advantage of other Zebra tools embedded into your modernized screens (using camera to take photos of damaged product, using Push-To-Talk to communicate with co-workers and supervisors, add voice to your applications to improve productivity.
5. You can on-board new employees faster with GUI-based interfaces that are more intuitive to use
6. You can do this design QUICKLY and inexpensively

These examples only scratch the surface of what you can do with ATTE. Each of these things will improve worker accuracy, productivity and overall job satisfaction without investing in unnecessary development and without having to sacrifice functionality.

Now go out there and be active, lay off the carbs and let’s work together to optimize your existing thin applications for more years of success.

If you have a WMS environment like SAP, JDA, High Jump or any number of other popular solutions, why not get a head start by using Rapid All-Touch?

Rapid ATTE - The fastest way to Migrate and/or Modernize a green screen environment.  Ivanti has made it so easy to modernize many different ERP/WMS environments and continue to add new ones. 

Zebra’s All-Touch Terminal Emulation (powered by Ivanti) is pre-licensed on a number of Zebra devices and available for purchase for many others (See Mobility DNA Matrix )

(Part # SW-ALLTOUCHTE-AND)

For Legacy Wavelink TelnetCE Users:

If you want to transition to a more Graphical User Interface, while still running green screen host on your Android devices, you can modernize using the RM² online tool and by scanning a few StageNow bar codes.  This will import the application settings into an interface that looks and functions more like a graphical interface in less than 5 minutes --> Watch the Modernize Video

StageNow will install the latest version of ATTE directly on the device, along with any required settings. Very Simple.

Don't have a previous configuration?

No problem.  Just key the host settings into the RM² portal.  You will find it here, Select Get Started

Questions? Go here and start a discussion:

All Touch TE (Velocity)

Have an opportunity?  Message me.