How Can Mobile Apps Boost Productivity and Accuracy in Inventory Data?
Numerous businesses across a variety of industries are investing in smart storage as well as e-commerce, which are still growing at double-digit rates. Businesses are looking for ways to enhance efficiency and meet rising consumer demands as interest in these technologies grows.
Target announced intentions to invest $7 billion on supply chain improvements last year. UPS plans to invest $20 billion over the next three years in order to increase efficiency and fulfillment capacity. According to a recent poll, 42 percent of firms intend to increase warehouse and distribution center investment in the coming year, the highest level in four years.
“Overall, the poll indicates optimism about the economy in general and supply chain activities in particular. If you don’t invest in technology, especially in a growing economy, your competitors will eat your lunch.”
Real-time data gathering and interconnectivity (41 to 95 percent), real-time inventory management (41 to 95 percent), people-technology connectivity (49 to 91 percent), smart analytics and machine learning (17 to 89 percent), and warehouse mobility solutions are expected to see the most growth between 2017 and 2040. (37 to 80 percent).
Real-time inventory management, people-technology connectivity, and smart analytics are all possible with mobile apps.
Boost Productivity and Efficiency
“The shift from fixed desktop workstations to smartphones and mobile devices is a significant step forward in warehouse efficiency—it significantly lowers walking time. This is critical, particularly in light of expanding warehouse sizes and businesses‘ talent shortages.
Employees can discover what they’re searching for faster using mobile applications, and managers can interact with and deploy field personnel more efficiently and effectively. In this approach, warehouse operations may do more with fewer people.
Accuracy Enhancement via Mobile App
Mobile applications make documenting, storing, and delivering data to those who need it more efficient, versatile, and powerful. The Husqvarna Group, a manufacturer of outdoor power goods, decreased packaging errors by 200 percent after implementing a quality tracking mobile app.
This development might explain why the usage of paper-based picking methods in the sector has decreased from 62 percent last year to 48 percent this year.
More Effective People Management with Mobile App
Human resources departments may utilize mobile applications to track warehouse workers’ location, competence, job history, and other characteristics. Some information can be made available to other mobile applications when it’s suitable. Having information on their workers’ skills and location, for example, might aid warehouse managers in assigning jobs for the day.
Asset Management & Optimization Using Mobile App
Mobile apps can give a real-time picture of distribution center equipment availability and position. This can also save warehouse managers and employees time.
Let’s say a warehouse employee need a forklift to transport merchandise. A real-time smartphone app may display the available forklifts. If no forklifts are available, the mobile app can show managers where the lifts are located so they can determine whether or not to pull one for the new work.
Workflow automation is a critical component in helping your employees to execute their tasks in the most efficient and flexible manner possible.
Increasing Accountability and Improving Business Results
What, oddly enough, creates a better paper trail than paper? Mobile apps that you may use and interact with from any location. Sure, warehouse employees can scribble something on paper for whoever has to see it next, but mobile applications collect data, make it accessible from anywhere, update it in real time, and archive it.
When work is finished, mobile apps can record timestamps. Following the completion of a task, they may demand the worker’s signature. Some smartphone apps even allow you to scan or picture something in order to show the pallet, product, or issue in question. All of this helps to improve reliability, accountability, and employee motivation by letting them feel that what they’re doing counts and is being measured. This may have the extra benefit of pushing employees to be more careful in whatever they do.
Real-time data combined with analytics may also provide a company a more full view of what’s going on in its warehouse operations. And that can act as a catalyst for the company’s continual progress.