Upwardly mobile
April 1st 2004

Using mobile printers in the warehouse can result in serious savings, as Charlotte Stonestreet found out at Zebra Technologies Mobile technology is nothing new in the materials handling industry. From phones to barcode scanners, we have long been aware of the benefits that can be reaped from using wireless solutions but what about mobile printers? Despite growing popularity across industry as whole, the use of mobile printers does not seem to have made any significant in roads into the warehouse, until now, that is. One company at the forefront of mobile printing in the warehouse is Zebra. Not only does the company supply the equipment, it also uses it to great advantage at its distribution warehouse in Preston. Always looking to increase margins or gain an extra advantage, as with many emerging technologies, the retail sector was an early adopter of mobile printers. According to Mike Pitt, Zebras vertical marketing manager for manufacturing and logistics, Wal-Mart was a prime example of this and started to use mobile printers to produce shelf edge price change labels in store. They used to produce the labels on desktop printers in the back of the store. Staff would have to do an awful lot of walking to and from the printers. They would then be left with a big reel of labels and have to find all the products in the store, says Pitt. They started using mobile printers and handheld terminals so they could scan the barcode on the shelf. The terminal would then talk to the network, the network would send the new price information to the printer and the printer would produce the new price label there and then. As a result, the company eliminated a huge amount of walking and made the whole operation a lot more efficient and it wasnt long before mobile printers were rolled out across most of the stores. The printers used by Wal-Mart were from a company called Comtec. The deal really put Comtec on the map and, as a result, Zebra acquired the company in April 2000. Following the acquisition, Zebra has taken many of the products and ideas that originated with Comtec and worked towards applying them in traditional Zebra market places of which the warehouse is a prime example. Zebra looked at the way in which the mobile printer had helped to revolutionise how shelf edge labels are printed in retail stores and asked if they could do the same for shipping labels in a warehouse, says Pitt. Introducing the mobile printer to the warehouse environment means it is now possible to achieve a return on in investment in an area that has traditionally been seen as a necessity rather than an area for potential cost savings. Many warehouses use conventional desktop printers in order to meet customer demands, particularly if they are serving large supermarket chains that require product to be labelled in a certain way. What Zebra is now offering is a way to meet these demands and actually save money in the process. Zebras mobile printers are available in 2in (50mm), 3in (75mm) and 4in (102mm) label versions the QL 220, QL 320 and QL 420, respectively. Although the company has offered mobile printers for a while, it was only with the launch of the 4in QL 420 about a year ago, that the company has really taken the technology into the warehouse environment. The 2 and 3in versions are aimed primarily at retail, while the 4in version fulfils 4 x 4 and 4 x 6in shipping label format requirements. The mobile printers incorporate network radios enabling them to link into the warehouse network in the same way as traditional desktop printers, or any other piece of equipment. Lighter format The way that Pitt describes the mobile printer range is basically as a desktop printer in a lighter, easier to carry format. There really is no great mystery, he says. Its simply in a size that lends itself to being carried around, therefore saving the walk time taken to get to the nearest static printer. They are also suitable for mounting on a forklift. Once Zebra had identified the potential benefits of mobile computers in the warehouse, what better way to prove the point than to roll them out in its own storage facility. And that is exactly what it has done at Preston under the direction of logistics manager, Clive Fearn. I guess Im in a pretty unusual position, because I actually work for a company that makes the tools that make my life easier! says Fearn. When I heard we were launching the 4in version of the mobile printer I wanted to be able to start using it straight away. To me it just makes so much common sense. The 30,000ft2 facility in Preston distributes equipment manufactured in the US to over 40 countries each month. Operating 24hrs a day, five days a week, the site also houses label manufacture and space is always tight. Before mobile printers were used for goods receipt labels, when a pallet was booked into the warehouse the operative had to walk to a terminal that housed the desktop printer and manually key in the relevant information in order to produce a label. Not only was time wasted actually walking to the desk, once the operative actually got there, there was no guarantee that it would be free to use as four other members of staff also used it to print labels. As well as wasted time waiting for the printer to become free, this could result in labels being mixed up before they even got to the pallet, as different operatives tried to print off their labels in a quick succession and rushed to apply them. There was also the opportunity for keying errors, as the information had to be manually input. With the mobile printers, the warehouse operative never has to leave the products. Using a handheld terminal he can scan straight on to the warehouse network in real-time. The network then communicates with the mobile printer to produce a label, which can be immediately placed on the product. So in addition to reducing the amount of physical work required, using a mobile solution helps to simplify the task overall. As a warehouse manger you always have to apply the philosophy of keep-it-simple, says Fearn. The simpler we make it for the chaps on the shop floor, the more chance weve all got of making the job easy and when its easy the quality goes up. Keeping the task as straight forward as possible also helps the warehouse manager to identify negligence among the staff. Before the use of mobile printers, booking goods in used to take around 49 seconds. It now takes just 29 seconds and productivity has been increased by 41%. Even though, at 30,000ft2, Zebras warehouse is not a particularly large facility, Fearn estimates that this year it will probably produce around 30,000 goods receipts labels so using the mobile printers saves an awful lot of time. There are also many less direct time savings to be taken into account that result from the system being more accurate. We actually save as much time again, if not more, because of the quality improvement, says Fearn. The operatives get the correct label on the product and put it away to the right location. Quality for me is just as important, if not more so, than walk time here because of the size and the structure of my distribution centre. Thanks to the mobile solution, Fearn has been able to do away with the annual stock check, as stock accuracy is a now phenomenal 99.99%. Previously, he estimates that at least four location errors would occur each day on goods received. These errors could take anything from 15 to 30 minutes to rectify. Now there is less than one such mistake per week. If you can get product put away accurately, the chances are it will flow though the whole of your warehouse correctly. When we go to pick, the goods are in the right locations and its very simple. This is something we never really took into account in terms of investment, but it has turned out to be a huge benefit. And of course if everything is correctly labelled and in its appropriate place, the chances of the wrong item being shipped out are virtually eliminated a particularly important point for a company that distributes worldwide. Extra space The mobile printers have also resulted in extra space being made available as the large desktop printer terminal, with all its wiring, has been eliminated. Obviously, flexibility is another key advantage of a wireless solution. If youve got a fixed printer it never moves, because once youve spent the money on cabling Ive done this before in larger warehouses when it needs to be moved say 100m in the future, you just dont have the budget for it, says Fearn. It also simplifies temporary reconfigurations for peak periods. All in all, using just five mobile printers Zebra has saved 5700 Euros per year in its goods-in operation alone. It is also using them for the repacking of bulk deliveries into smaller selling units. In this application, the increase in productivity has been 62%, with each cycle reduced from 108 to 62 seconds. This results in annual savings of 6400 Euros. If you want to see the mobile printers in action at the Preston site for yourself, Zebra has produced a case study in the form of a short film showing the process before and after. You can see this online at www.zebra.co.uk, or contact the company for a free DVD version.

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