Wireless technology is readily available, smart devices are ubiquitous, and manufacturers are adopting corporate strategies that mandate mobility. There’s just one piece of the puzzle still missing: off-the-shelf applications.
A new crew is making its presence felt at many manufacturing companies. The members of this team, trained in the art of information sharing, can best be described as “grey collar workers.” They consist of executives on the road, engineers in the field, and operators on the factory floor. It is where blue collar and white collar unite, and the one commonality is mobility.
About three years ago, PepsiAmericas recognized that this next-generation information worker was playing a game-changing role in the organization, helping to streamline operations through the use of real-time information. So the company made a strategic decision to enable those workers by building out a wireless infrastructure, creating an entire mobile technology team responsible for designing and managing the network, the devices, and the applications.
In essence, Pepsi’s mobile team is on a mission to automate communications. “It’s about making sure everybody involved with a customer is aware of what needs to happen,” says Mark Hampton, director of PepsiAmericas’ Mobile Solutions Group. “It’s making sure the right data is at the right place.”
PepsiAmericas is the bottling business for Pepsi-Cola Co. It has a very large sales force responsible for orders, a warehouse team responsible for inventory, a distribution team that delivers the product, and merchandisers who put the product on the shelves. “The end goal is to have the delivery guy on the way to the store contacting the merchandiser so they show up at the same time to unload the truck,” Hampton says. Not that they can’t pick up the phone and coordinate schedules, but “the next step is to have them automatically communicate.”
To enable that kind of seamless, automated communication, companies like Pepsi need to integrate wireless into existing applications where information on customers, inventories, and transportation networks lives. And that means they must learn how to navigate the many layers of the mobile landscape because, before you can create that unified architecture where everything integrates, you must wade through a complex combination of wireless technologies and devices, many of which have nothing in common. There’s a patchwork of protocols related to each piece of the wireless infrastructure, whether it’s RFID, mesh networks, WiFi, WiMax, or cellular standards, such as CDMA and GSM. Interoperability is not a given.
And, to further complicate things, wireless applications are conspicuously absent. Though some vendors are beginning to roll out wireless enterprise applications around CRM, field service, and asset tracking, and big carriers such as AT&T and Sprint offer more comprehensive services that enlist partners to deliver a full suite of solutions, there are still many holes to plug. For now, manufacturers, unfortunately, are the ones responsible for connecting the dots — a tough spot to be in as mobility becomes a corporate mandate.
Beyond E-mail
Indeed, like PepsiAmericas, many manufacturers already consider wireless a strategic technology. The majority of respondents (66%) to a recent Managing Automation poll on the next steps in mobility said wireless infrastructure is a strategic part of their business. And, perhaps not surprisingly, it’s the executive/management team, wielding BlackBerries or notebook computers, who are making the most use of the wireless airwaves (89%), followed closely by the sales and marketing team (77%). Field support and production teams were also cited as departments that could benefit from an untethered terrain.
But, so far, manufacturers haven’t deployed a wide array of wireless applications. In fact, according to the survey, the main application in play today is e-mail, which is just a small slice of the productivity pie that mobility makes available to manufacturers.
“I always get a kick out of how people think enterprise mobility is simply a BlackBerry with e-mail,” PepsiAmericas’ Hampton says, noting the sales, warehouse, distribution, and device management applications the company has in place. And PepsiAmericas is “just scratching the surface,” he says.