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Mobility For the Workforce
Imagine 600 additional very smart sensors roaming your plant
daily watching for anomalies and instantly reporting them into the
manufacturing database. From there, the new information is available for
action by the appropriate team member. Steve Garbrecht, of Wonderware,
posed this possibility to me recently.
A plant employee who
normally does not use a computer or see a human-machine interface (HMI)
screen spots a leak on a pump in a back part of the plant. Instead of
walking past and saying something to the effect of, "that's someone
else’s job," the team member pulls out a small, wireless device and
enters "leaky pump at location X." This information is transmitted
directly to the plant manufacturing database and pops up on the screen
as a potential action item. The maintenance manager or supervisor notes
the problem and sends a technician to investigate.
Garbrecht calls humans "very smart sensors." They can see, smell,
hear, and touch things and situations that just can't be sensed in
traditional manufacturing ways. Everyone in a plant can be empowered by
small, inexpensive wireless devices. This is just one example of how a
mobile, connected workforce can impact the operations of your plant...
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Manufacturing On the Move -
Mobile wireless devices, systems and software are
changing the way the manufacturing world works, promising more work in
less time, and offering new ways to do old things#&151;and more importantly,
new ways to do new things.
What do you really mean by the mobile workforce? It is a little
unclear, because mobile workers have gained a lot of attention in the
last few years. Now, any employee in motion at any time for any
function, even driving to work, has been shoehorned into the definition,
and any technology from a long extension cord to a scooter is being sold
as a critical component.
But mobile workers in the industrial segment have begun to receive
their own spotlight, because wireless communication alternatives are
adding to production possibilities. "Wireless has been part of larger
plants for a long time," says Julie Fraser, principal industry analyst,
Cambashi Inc., a Cummaquid, Mass.-based consulting firm. "But until
recently, it was all mobile radios or walkie-talkies. Now there are
other options..."
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The Wireless Popping Machine -
Dale and Thomas Popcorn, based in Englewood, N.J., makes
a broad spectrum of retail flavored and wholesale popped corn products,
supported by a 100,000 square foot warehouse of materials and
ingredients.
Manager of Information Technology (IT) Infrastructures
Norm Steiner joined the company shortly after it had finalized design of
a new, wireless warehouse tracking system.
"Two years ago, it was a new installation, a greenfield," Steiner
says, "and a very interesting application. I was really happy to be
instantly in charge of the installation of a totally new system..."
Read more
Previous Wireless World Review Editions:
July 2008
April 2008
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