Multimodal: What’s New in Mobility for the Warehouse?

In the early days of warehouse management, records were kept by pencil and paper. Inventory was tracked by chalk and chalkboard. In the late 1970s, when barcode scanning came to industry, only a few early adopters made use of it. Warehouse operations are painfully slow to adopt new technology as anecdotal evidence of return on investment ROI is just not enough. The return has to be real. So, in the1980s when computers with attached barcode scanning wands came to industry, and a clear, demonstrable productivity gain over paper-based systems was realized, the door was opened to the limited use of mobile terminals and barcode scanners in the warehouse and stockyard. 

Today, mobility in supply chain execution is essential to efficient operation and its fingerprint is everywhere. Tour any modern warehouse ranging in size from 10K to 10M square feet and you’ll see mobile devices in use all over the warehouse. Fork-lifts use mobile devices for bulk moves, cross-docking and non-conveyor order picking. Operators with carts and totes move about the warehouse picking orders by mobile systems. Workers with wearable systems and headsets, wired and Bluetooth, are using voice technology (voice picking) in every imaginable configuration. Having a strong mobile infrastructure is critical for service and maintenance activities as well as asset tracking and of course standard inventory control functions like cycle counts and inventory audits. So, with mobile everywhere is there anything really new?

Mobile devices continue to get more powerful in speed and in total user memory. In addition, device manufacturers like Intermec are integrating peripherals that can be used simultaneously by client software applications. The age of multimodal mobile has arrived! The productivity gains associated with multimodal mobile systems that allow seamless use of multiple database systems, RFID, GPS, VoIP, digital imaging, voice technology (for voice recognition for security and speech recognition for the translation of spoken voice to readable text), and barcode scanning are as strong as those realized moving from paper to terminals.

Consider an upgrade to multimodal mobile technology to help you find additional cost reductions throughout the warehouse with an ROI that is measured in just months. In most cases switching to multimodal mobile from single task based systems doesn’t require an infrastructure change; it’s just a better way to use the mobile equipment in which you already have a significant investment.