GPS tech brings winds of change in warehousing biz

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GPS tech brings winds of change in warehousing biz

Commodity Online
This survey has proved that technology can do big wonders in warehousing business. According to a survey conducted by Motorola Inc, North American industries in transportation, manufacturing and trucking/warehousing have reduced their expenses and manhours by using global positioning system (GPS) technologies.

According to the survey, GPS-enabled technologies are helping to increase mobile workforce productivity and enabling enterprises to become more efficient via a reduction in annual labour and fuel operating costs.

The main cited benefit in the nearly 50 per cent of enterprises currently using GPS-enabled technologies was a significant reduction in fuel consumption, which was reflected in a reduction in travel distance by an average of 231.2 miles per week and recording $51,582 in annual fuel savings. With more than a million trucking carriers in the United States the potential industry-wide annual fuel savings could reach $53 billion.

The study also revealed enterprises deploying GPS-enabled technologies saved approximately 54 minutes per day – translating into an annual recouped labour savings of $5,484 per employee or $5.4m per surveyed enterprise. In addition to the cost savings, locationing applications were credited with improving the organization of employee routes, giving companies the ability to know precisely where their employees are at any given time and allowing them to examine routing scenarios before implementation.

Surveyed enterprises indicated GPS solutions enable the mobile workforce to spend less time in traffic or finding routes, while increasing the amount of time spent with new or existing customers. In fact, when asked why they would consider investing in GPS or other new technologies those surveyed cited customer service as the number one priority.

The survey identified other key applications — navigation for improved on-time performance and route optimization. Navigation and route optimization are responding to the difficulties field mobility workers often have locating new stops during the course of their shift and streamlining deliveries.

Field mobility workers in the transportation and trucking industry are experiencing difficulties such as locating stops, reducing fuel expense and improving on time performance resulting in a drain on financial and manpower resources of their organization.

With nearly 200,000 mobile computers with integrated GPS shipped in recent years, Motorola continues to address the industry pain points which were identified in its research through field mobility solutions that enable the customers to do their jobs more efficiently and drive measurable business results.

Motorola’s enterprise mobility business connects people to information when and where they need it – helping to transform businesses to be more productive, efficient and responsive to their customers.

The recently announced MC75 Enterprise Digital Assistant (EDA) expands Motorola’s offering of rugged mobile computers with integrated GPS capability and addresses other key empowering technologies that will enable the next generation of rich and powerful business applications.

These technologies include 3.5G HSDPA and 3G CDMA-EVDO (Rev A) support for voice and data services around the globe; high performance barcode data capture on both 1D and 2D bar codes; a high resolution 2 megapixel auto-focus color camera for a variety of image capture applications; 802.11a/b/g wireless LAN (WLAN), Bluetooth and a high resolution VGA display.

Motorola conducted the independent research study to measure attitudinal and behavioural decision making habits of North American transportation and trucking executives. Over 255 North American IT and telecom decision makers completed the survey via the e-rewards global online market research panel with over 4.2 million consumers and businesses participating. The survey was designed to provide a measurement of their overall perceptions of GPS/navigation system applications within the field services industry, with an emphasis on the transportation and trucking/warehousing industries.

Motorola is known around the world for innovation in communications. The company develops technologies, products and services that make mobile experiences possible.