MANUFACTURING MOBILITY

Logistics Insight Asia, 1/5/2009

A study by MOTOROLA into the usage and impact of mobile technologies in manufacturing reveals increasing awareness on the top floor and significant productivity increases on the shop floor.

Enterprise mobility has emerged as a top strategic initiative among leading global organizations. To benchmark the current state of enterprise mobility adoption, Motorola conducted independent research among a representative sample of enterprise mobility decision-makers, the chief purchasers of enterprise mobility solutions and various mobile workers within enterprise and commercial businesses.

The Enterprise Mobility Barometer, as it is called, provides an understanding of both the opportunities and challenges that mobility poses to enterprises today. The purpose of this research and market trends study was to better understand the IT environment and business strategy concerning enterprise mobility systems and mobility applications, with the key research areas of focus including:

• How are various enterprises and different segments of mobile workers using enterprise mobility solutions?

• Which mobile and wireless technologies have penetrated the enterprise?

• Which vertical industries are adopting mobility solutions and why?

• What business applications are driving mobile workforce investments?

Manufacturing participants in the research represented a relevant cross-section of manufacturing firms, including companies in the aerospace and defense, automotive, chemicals, consumer packaged goods, energy and utility, high-tech, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, retail, and transportation sectors.

The mobility decision-maker respondent sample includes CEOs, VPs, CIOs, IT directors, operations managers, facilities managers, and IT managers with a key focus on mobility drivers, technology and application spend and technology penetration.

The mobile worker respondent sample included operations and field personnel with a key focus on mobility viewpoints, applications and technology utilization. They were required to be employed for a function whereby they work away from their primary enterprise environment and be an active user of enterprise-procured and managed mobile devices and mobile applications.

MOBILITY VIEWPOINTS
According to the Enterprise Mobility Market Barometer, mobility has risen in importance in the enterprise IT agenda, with an overwhelmingly majority (71 percent) of mobility decision-makers and mobile workers stated that mobility is more important to their enterprise today than it was in the previous year.

With macroeconomic trends putting pressure on manufacturing operations to become more efficient, mobility decision makers indicated that high ROI has been found in task-worker mobility applications such as preventive maintenance, asset management and tracking, and data collection. These applications can all be automated and mobilized to gain maximum efficiencies.

The survey results also highlight higher adoption of mobile technologies in discrete manufacturing sectors – such as computer and electronic products, industrial and electrical equipment, automotive, and aerospace – which is reflective of the higher labor component.

To gauge the key decision-making strategies for enterprise mobility devices and ascertain the most important evaluation criteria, surveyed manufacturing mobility decision makers were requested to rate the importance of a number of attributes. As detailed in Figure 1, 76 percent of respondents cited wireless capabilities, device durability, and device price as being most important. Key secondary importance ratings include mobile application support and mobile device management.

DRIVERS & CHALLENGES
Manufacturing mobile workers and mobility decision makers outlined key shop floor and in-building mobility benefits such as more efficient utilization of workers and diagnostic equipment. Increased access to and availability of data leads to lower operational costs and reduced downtime of key assets. Key fieldbased benefits include real-time inventory and order status checks, which enable realtime visibility into competitive pricing and inventory consumption to optimize inventory and trigger replenishment activities.

Key benefits cited by manufacturing mobility decision makers include employee empowerment for heightened productivity, fast wireless communications, supply chain and inventory management efficiencies, improved customer service, and competitive advantage/differentiation from mobile access to real-time information.

However, along with benefits come deployment challenges, including mobile hardware costs, integration costs, security and interference concerns, and device/ infrastructure management. Several respondents cited that many processes are still prohibitively expensive to fully automate with hardware-based sensors and actuators for closed-loop control of production.

In fact, the manufacturing industry lags behind several other industries as mobility has not been adopted in a majority of applications where it could provide a significant return on investment. On average, according to the Enterprise Mobility Market Barometer, manufacturing mobility decision makers allocate 15.9 percent of their IT and telecom budget for mobile and wireless technologies – under pacing the mean industry peer average of 18.5 percent.

Manufacturing mobility decision makers were optimistic that future mobility investments would be more driven by the enablement of lean planning and execution processes, with mobility applications fitting well with lean strategies that focus on the reduction of space and labor requirements.

MOBILITY IMPACT
As outlined in Figure 3, key investmentdriving mobility applications among decision makers include inventory/ materials management, maintenance/ repair, quality control/assurance, and plant operations.

Within inventory/materials management mobility applications, for example, data is collected via mobile computers and fed into enterprise systems keeping track of work-in-process (WIP) inventory. Mobile maintenance/repair solutions, one of the more established mobile applications in the manufacturing segment, allow maintenance workers to remotely access a machine’s maintenance history and designs.

Meanwhile, quality control/assurance mobility applications provide shop floor workers the ability to document plant operations via a mobile device to ensure quality and regulatory compliance. Key cited benefits include a drop in quality control bottlenecks, a reduction in waste and giveaways, an increase in quality visibility, and an improvement in audit and regulatory compliance.

Plant operation applications provide workers access to control systems and HMI applications, with the primary functionality of these applications being mobile reporting and monitoring.

Key manufacturing mobile worker segments and mobility decision makers identified that there is a high degree of eff ectiveness in firms that were already mobilizing several of these applications, with nearly one-third of surveyed manufacturing mobile workers (see Figure 4) able to recover at least 50 minutes per day due to the utilization of enterprise mobility solutions, and an average of 52 minutes saved.