Getting Over The Limits

It's time to retire old notions about scanning limitations and wireless integration challenges. Maybe it's time to retire equipment too.

Retirement planning would be easy if only you knew how long you'd live. The same is true for mobile computing and data collection projects. If you knew that business requirements and opportunities would never change, it would be easy to create effective systems for satisfying them.

But needs change fast, and so do the best practices and technologies for meeting them.

It can be difficult to decide if new processes and technologies would bring value to the business. For example, fleet operators surveyed for a recent Aberdeen Group study were nearly evenly divided as to whether mobile computing technology still provides a competitive advantage (44 percent) or if it has become a competitive necessity or cost of doing business (43 percent).

"Mobile computers and wireless connectivity are a necessity for Tier 1 trucking and transportation firms," said David Krebs, mobile and wireless practice director at Venture Development Corp. (VDC), a leading market research firm in the industrial mobile computing and AIDC industries. "Second-tier fleets (<1,000 trucks) probably have an 18- to 24-month window where mobile computing will still provide a competitive advantage."

While companies debate the need and value of increased automation, they are often pushed into making changes because of new customer requirements. The U.S. Department of Defense RFID tagging requirements have attracted a tremendous amount of attention. However, they impact a relative handful of suppliers compared to the Unique Identification (UID) program, which will require most of the DoD's 43,000 suppliers to apply two-dimensional (2-D) bar codes on items—not shipping containers—to support lifetime tracking applications.