MobileFrame Blog » Business Logic

Barcode Asset Inspection – Challenge Accepted

Nick Hession — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:41:02 +0000

Here at MobileFrame we are pretty good at solving the problem of paper in the field. In this case we had a customer come to us with a very simple yet, annoying problem.

Here’s the current process:

Write the Barcode from the asset on a sheet of paper
Indicate if it passed or failed inspection
If the asset failed, indicate why

They were having problems with

The wrong asset tag information being captured (Transcription Error)
Forgetting to indicate why the inspection failed
Not turning in required paperwork in a timely fashion
Duplication of data back at the office.

Here is the application that I developed in under 1 hour that was able to address these problems with 100% data accuracy, and real time information sharing. If you would like to learn more about MobileFrame please contact us today.

What is RFID? What Does an RFID System Look like?

Nick Hession — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:58:54 +0000

RFID or Radio Frequency Identification is a technology that involves the use of a tag that is applied or incorporated into a product or asset to help identify and track the item using Radio Waves. There are many different types of tags and associated readers available on the market today. It’s now common for organizations to not only look for ways to eliminate field based paper processes but to also think past bar-coding as well.

Here is a good example, you employ a team of 100+ Sales representatives that are in charge of doing inventory counts at customer locations (Think big box retailers) and the inventory needs to be 100% be accurate. The current solution involves the process of manually scanning 100′s if not 1000′s of products while at the customer’s site. No matter how diligent you are this can be a time consuming and error prone task. How do you solve the problem? Hire more sales people? Invest in better, faster scanners? Buy your sales reps memberships to the local gym so they can move faster? A great alternative would be to create an RFID based system.

Here is how such a system could operate. First each item would be equipped with an RFID tag. Instead of the sales rep physically scannning each and every piece of merchandise, he or she would now only need to scan the reader toward the merchandise to conduct an inventory count. At this point the rep could automatically create a suggested order quantity and move on to the important part of the job…Closing Business. The advantage of the RFID system is that each rep can now spend less time manually scanning each product to count inventory without worrying about missing anything.

MobileFrame can help your organization deploy RFID technologies out of the box. Altair Eyewear is an example of a customer of ours who is utilizing such a system to conduct inventory counts of their eye glass frames. To learn more about our advanced RFID Capabilities contact us today.

Migrating your Forms from Paper to Electronic Format – Don’t forget the Business Logic!

Patricia Oswalt — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:45:36 +0000

I had an awesome discussion today with a potential client that is interested in converting his current paper based inspection process into electronic format. He was very enthusiastic about the prospect of getting rid of the mountain of paper in his office. His enthusiasm got me thinking about not only the benefits of eliminating paper but ALSO the benefits of embedded business logic. For example: if an inspection failed he could require that his inspectors collect information about why it failed, capture a picture of the damage or issue, maybe even record a voice note and associate it with the inspection.

We were able to identify many different areas of opportunity. Here are just a few:

Eliminating the costly duplication of effort associated with his current paper process
Providing real time information to management
Eliminating transcription and handwriting errors
Reduction in travel time delivering paper forms back to the office
Green Solution (No Paper, No Ink, Etc.)

While all of the benefits of moving off of paper were important here is what really got him excited:

Being able to verify that the information being collected is accurate (E.g. If a meter reading is always between 100 -200, the inspector cannot enter 3500)
Applying best practices to the business logic along the entire process. The ability to enforce key steps in the inspection process is significant. With paper based forms it’s easy for people to skip fields, but with an electronic app fields can be required to be answered or the user can’t move off the page.

Obtaining a significant ROI on your mobile technology investment involves more than just changing from a paper data collection process. True Enterprise Mobility is about adopting a more efficient operating process, and executing against a carefully designed workflow, thereby providing technicians, key decision makers, and customers with the information they need exactly when they need it.

To find out how MobileFrame enables organizations to go paperless with embedded business logic, request an online demo or contract us directly

Phone: 408.885.1200 Email: Sales@MobileFrame.com