Warehouse Management is a significant part of any Supply-Chain cycle. Managing & controlling operations of a warehouse, on day –to- day basis, is known as the Warehouse Management. Basically, from a layman’s point of view, how you are managing your warehouse depends on the three things – your inventory (types of goods lying in there), your business model, and the technologies you adopt in the supply-chain. Warehouse Management is not just how much space you got but how you use it! Definitely, technologies play a key role in shaping your business, managing your warehouse .What are the top technologies you should adopt to manage your warehouse? Let’s discuss!

Disruptive Technologies

Industries across the world are adopting modern technologies such as the Internet-of-things, Machine-Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, etc. in their day-to-day functioning of businesses. In the entire process, two major things occur – Innovation and Disruption. Thus, disruptive technology is actually the technological innovation that penetrates the existing market and causes disruption there. Smart Warehouses are the product of disruptive technologies such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Machine Learning (ML).

1.Smart Warehouse Management System & IoT

Warehouses play an important link in any kind of supply-chain facilitating storage of goods till they get dispatched at a target location. How to bring that global visibility to your supply chain in your business? The answer is WMS or the Smart Warehouse Management System, an IoT enabled technology product. You can get immense power-packed benefits from WMS that converts your traditional warehouse into a smart warehouse! Thus, managing your day-to-day logistic operations becomes easier now. They are done by the Automated-Guided-Vehicles (AGVs), Telematics system which help boost accuracy and speed of the logistic processes, minimizing human intervention.WMS helps optimize all the inventory tasks, procedures in the system.

2. Machine-To-Machine (M2M) Technology

The M2M technology helps streamline and monitor automation process of your warehouse. You don’t need to watch manually how the orders are processed. Combined with WMS, the latest M2M systems can now control all the equipment in your warehouse and this is quite important towards order fulfillment processes. M2M helps you provide actionable insights to take better decisions viz., accuracy in information leads to demand forecasting, which helps you predict when to deliver product!

3. Order Fulfillment Optimization Technology

In short, this technology can be described as an automated, efficient and cost-effective solution over picking methods that are done manually. It helps automate your warehouse processes as a whole.

• Pick- To- Light System – It helps direct your operators in warehouse to reach product location through the help of specific light displays. It has immense ability to organize big volumes of orders picked at a time, viz., Plan, Control and analyze the picked orders. It has a high-level of picking productivity.
• Put-To-Light System – It helps direct your operators how to allocate, where to allocate, various products in the warehouse for respective orders. It has immense ability to pick products from several bulk stocks. If you have a retail warehouse, this system could be an ideal choice. It facilitates high –speed order-sorting capability.

4. Voice Warehouse Management Systems

Voice technology is one of the most effective picking methods used in logistics management. The technology VWMS uses speech recognition as well as speech synthesis allowing workers to communicate within WMS. Spoken commands are given for picking, receiving, putting orders and other warehouse shipping functions.

5. Warehouse Robotics Technology

Smart Robots help in movement, sorting and storage of your inventory in warehouse. As a manger of your warehouse, you should pick that Robotics Technology that suits your requirement

The aforementioned description of technologies is not the end of technological intervention while dealing with multiple chores within the cycle of Warehouse Management. There are plenty of other technologies available in the market. Pick-By-Vision technology, use of Drones, specific Labor Management System software, and many more. You should consult experts to decide which technologies suit your requirement, your environment, facilitating smoother operations and supply chains of your Warehouse.

If you wish to uncover how your warehouse can be managed with simplicity – reach out to our technology experts today!

Apple fans have breathlessly awaited Apple’s entry into the tablet computer market. Since the company unveiled the iPad in late January, investors have jumped on the bandwagon, too, running up Apple’s stock more than 10 percent.

Part of that rise can be attributed to the steady rise in sales of the iPhone and the company’s Mac computers. But much of it clearly has to do with tablet fever. On the day this month when Apple made the completely unsurprising announcement that the iPad would go on sale on April 3, the stock jumped nearly 4 percent.

Expectations are clearly high. Now the iPad has to meet them.

Apple has given no public indication of what kinds of sales it expects, or what may constitute success. But at the iPad introduction in January, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, implicitly set a lofty standard. He said the iPad would offer an experience that was superior to that of netbooks, a rapidly growing category of inexpensive and lightweight laptops that accounted for $11 billion in global sales last year.

He also said that the 75 million people who own iPhones and iPod Touches already knew how to use the iPad, which uses the same operating system and touch-screen interface.

But analysts and investors are searching for their own ways to judge the iPad over the short and long term. Their projections vary, but many Apple analysts seem to think the company will sell around a million iPads by the end of its quarter in June, and around 5 million by the end of 2010.

Analysts acknowledge that a certain amount of guesswork goes into those projections, in part because it is not yet clear what kinds of applications and content will be available for the iPad from media companies and outside developers.

“The reality for the iPad is going to be determined by what apps are made for it,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. “People are debating the use case for it, and the use case will be largely determined by the apps. A lot of people are still on the fence whether this is a legitimate market or not.”

There are other variables at work. For example, it appears the iPad will initially be available only in Apple’s stores and at Best Buy. How quickly will Apple begin selling it through other retailers, and in countries other than the 10 it named this year?

Will Apple allow American wireless carriers other than AT&T, like Verizon, to offer data plans for the 3G version of the device? And how quickly might Apple lower the iPad’s price, or introduce models with new features like a built-in camera?

In considering how the iPad may affect Apple, analysts must also navigate the fuzzy topic known as cannibalization. Consumers who spend $499 for the cheapest iPad model might be buying it in lieu of a $999 MacBook laptop or, more likely, a $199 iPod Touch.

Many analysts are looking to historical precedent to gauge the iPad’s prospects in the market. Back in 2001, iPod sales started out slowly; Apple sold only 372,000 of them in its first year, then around a million in the second, after the opening of the iTunes Store.

After the iPhone’s introduction in 2007, which inspired a similar media frenzy, Apple sold 1.4 million handsets in its first two quarters, and then 6.1 million during its entire first year.

But the iPhone may be a poor example: people were already comfortable buying cellphones. Few people have ever owned a tablet computer. The iPad is something almost entirely new to most consumers, more akin to, say, the Kindle from Amazon.com or the Apple TV set-top box. Those devices each sold less than a million units in their first year.

Achieving the mass-market penetration — and cultural impact — of the iPod and iPhone is ultimately Apple’s biggest challenge with the iPad. “They are going to need to target mainstream users who might otherwise decide to purchase an e-book reader or a netbook,” said Michael Abramsky, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “If they are successful in starting to convince those kinds of folks, and getting beyond the early adopters who will line up for anything, then it has the potential to blossom.”

But even in those best-case situations, the iPad most likely will not change Apple’s overall financial picture anytime soon. A. M. Sacconaghi Jr., an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, predicts that the iPad could contribute about 28 cents a share to Apple’s bottom line in its first full year of sales. The iPhone, by contrast, is responsible for about $8 of earnings a share.

“It’s going to be pretty small from a financial impact initially, but the range of ultimate outcomes for the iPad is pretty big,” Mr. Sacconaghi said.

Investors are also trying to keep their expectations grounded. Erick Maronak, chief investment officer for the $1.2 billion Victory Large Cap Growth Fund, which counts Apple as its biggest holding, said he was looking forward to the iPad — but still banking on the iPhone.

The iPad “is yet another example of how the innovation with Apple continues, and that they have not grown complacent,” Mr. Maronak said. “But the much bigger driver is that this is going to be a pretty big year for the iPhone.”

All the iPad and iPhone optimism leaves many analysts and investors wondering what, exactly, disappointment might look like for Apple. If Apple sells only half a million iPads during the next two months, or less than 2 million by the end of September, it could conceivably damage the company’s stellar reputation with Wall Street — and Mr. Jobs’s air of infallibility in selecting and entering new markets.

“There’s always a risk,” said Charles Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company, who points to past Apple failures like the Mac Cube and Apple TV, but nonetheless believes that the iPad will sell briskly.

If the iPad does fail to sell, “it could impact the stock,” Mr. Wolf said. “But I doubt it would be the end of the world.”

Resource:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/technology/29apple.html

At first glance, and for many types of industries, widespread iPad adoption seems like a long shot, analysts say. But the iPad’s strengths as a smooth conduit of media, plus a vast range of potential touch-screen programs could mean it becomes a hit in both the home and the workplace.

In its roll-out of the iPad, Apple has not made any overt pitches to the business world, and it apparently didn’t have business-users in mind when it designed the iPad. Apple’s tagline for the device is pitched at consumers, not businesses: “See the web, email, and photos like never before.”

“The iPad is targeted at the consumer . . . it’s not trying to support office productivity applications,” said Leslie Fiering, an analyst at Gartner Research and vice president covering mobile computing.

The iPad “is going to tend to be focused more toward content delivery, entertainment and gaming.”

Pros and cons

Because the iPad is a tablet-style device, it is meant to be held in a user’s hands. Even with its multi-touch screen and onscreen keyboard, text entry and the creation of documents will be onerous, analysts say.

The iPad also lacks so-called multitasking – the ability to have multiple programs, such as an Internet browser and a word processor, open simultaneously – which is a serious hindrance for efficiently getting work done on a computer.

But there are of course things that the iPad should do well, and top among them is content delivery, Fiering said.

She says companies could show off their products and brochures on the iPad. Travel agencies, for example, could let people pick destinations and hotels by touching on-screen maps and options right in the office.

Other examples abound. “If someone has manuals they have to carry, and they don’t need text input, the iPad might be a very interesting device for them,” Fiering told TechNewsDaily.

Clipboard replacement

The iPad’s size and user-friendly touch-screen might allow it to realize some of the original promise of tablet computers in replacing the clipboard.

Such old-school, paper-based tools are still used by many professionals, including field appraisers and claims adjusters, and also in shipping and delivery services.

In the last example, the United Parcel Service and FedEx have indeed adopted tablet-style devices. But these are rugged and require their own unique “ecosystem,” as Fiering put it, of special cases, brackets, printers, and car mounts, for instance. Accordingly, she does not see logistics companies scooping up the iPad.

But Jason Schwartz, a blogger and the chief investment analyst for Lone Peak Asset Management, thinks the iPad’s business potential as a notepad or clipboard replacement has been underestimated.

Schwarz, who has Apple stocks, recently wrote: “teachers will use the iPad as they lecture, coaches will use it as an in game [sic] video/scouting tool . . . think of all the real estate agents and other salesmen who operate at point of sale.”

For many companies, however, it will be hard to justify the need for a third device like an iPad on top of a company-provided smart phone and a desktop or notebook computer, said Fiering.

“The iPad is not intended to really replace anything,” agreed Jeff Orr, senior analyst for mobile devices at ABI Research. “You’re not going hold it to your ear to make a call,” he said, and the iPad cannot come close to beating notebooks and desktops at creating content.

Life support for industrial iPads

But one industry that may adopt the iPad early is healthcare, a sector where tablets have made some inroads and for which the iPad may be uniquely well-placed.

Epocrates, a San Mateo, Calif.-based company, is optimistic. It makes mobile and web-based healthcare products, including the most popular medical reference program in Apple’s app store that has about 140,000 active iPhone users.

“Certainly the iPhone has demonstrated that [apps have uses] in clinical settings,” said

Bob Quinn, chief technology officer at Epocrates.

The company recently surveyed 350 doctors about iPad adoption. Nine percent said they planned to buy an iPad right away, and another 13 percent within a year of its release. An additional 40 percent expressed interest in purchasing the iPad but wanted more information first.

Accordingly, Epocrates is customizing its clinical reference application for the iPad to take advantage of the devices larger display, which is more than double the size of the iPhone’s screen.

Besides being as good as an iPhone for prescription look-ups, making calendar appointments and accessing patient lists, the iPad will allow for better viewing of charts and radiological imagery as well, Quinn said.

The iPad could become valuable to doctors for other reasons as well, Quinn said. Its microphone will allow for dictation of patient notes, for example.

Also, accessories such as the docking station will keep the iPad charged and ready for use. Pairing that with an iPad keyboard or Bluetooth will give clinicians “the portability of a handheld device but both the text entry and viewability of a desktop [computer],” Quinn said. They’ll have “the best of both worlds.”

Perhaps single devices could be shared amongst staff and handed off to the next nursing shift, rather like paper-filled patient folders.

Along these lines, Quinn sees the iPad as a vehicle for bringing electronic health records to smaller clinics. Epocrates is developing an iPad-geared product for this capability as well.

All in the apps?

As with the iPhone, much of the iPad’s potential will depend on the apps developed for it. In this regard, Apple has done itself a business-savvy favor by ensuring that apps for the iPhone are available for the new iPad.

Those accustomed to the iPhone’s plethora of business-related apps may find the iPad an easier interface, and new, dedicated iPad apps should be right around the corner.

In a blog post, Schwarz predicts that business-specific iPad apps “will be developed that allow these professionals to execute their tasks with minimal typing requirements.”

Over at PC World, Tony Bradley offers a selection of apps for the iPad that “business professionals can use to transform the media-consuming toy into a productive business tool.”

Many of these apps, such as the Freshbooks for billable hours and Meebo for instant messaging, get around the iPad’s lack of multitasking by being able to remain running in the background while the user does primary tasks.

What’s more, some apps like Freshbooks do not need an active Web connection to work.

As promising as apps are, they could also prove to be a problem for business adaption of the iPad, Orr of ABI Research said.

“The fundamental challenge I see with iPad . . . is being locked into the iTunes apps store,” Orr said.

It could be difficult for a company to keep all of its iPads updated with a certain set of apps because each device has to have its own purchase account. This is unlike how other business mobile devices and computers get updated when IT managers obtain bulk licenses for as many software copies as needed, and then distribute the program over the company’s network.

Essentially, keeping all the devices on one page could prove tricky. For the individual user who wants to customize an iPad to personal preferences without having to coordinate with other devices, however, this is not a problem.

Overall, analysts feel that the iPad will be better for someone unwinding after work rather than as the device of choice to make the workday easier.

“If your everyday computer was broken, could you get your work done on the iPad?” Orr asked. “Yeah, you would persevere, but you wouldn’t like it.”

Resource:
http://www.technewsdaily.com/will-the-ipad-be-a-hit-with-businesses-0337/

The growth of smartphones running Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating systems, coupled with users’ heavy application adoption, is driving smartphone traffic over wireless networks, which increased by about 193 percent between February 2009 and February 2010.

The finding comes from a March 25 AdMob report that looked to separate the network traffic between smartphones, feature phones and MIDs (mobile Internet devices) over the past year. The firm, which measures ad requests and impressions, not sales, found smartphones to account for 48 percent of AdMob’s worldwide traffic in February 2010, up from 35 percent a year earlier.

Feature phone traffic declined from 58 percent to 35 percent over the year, as more users switched to smartphones.

MID traffic, however, driven in large part by the Apple iPod touch, showed the strongest growth of the three form factors, increasing from approximately 7 percent in February 2009 to 17 percent a year later. While the Sony PSP and Nintendo DSi contributed, the iPod touch accounted for 93 percent of MID traffic.

“In absolute terms,” states the report, “mobile Internet device category traffic increased 403 percent.”

Breaking the numbers down by operating systems, Google’s Android was the fastest-growing in the AdMob network, with requests increasing from 2 percent to 24 percent over the year, thanks to the Motorola Droid, the HTC Dream, Hero and Magic and the Motorola Cliq — the five top Android devices on the network.

Nonetheless, Apple’s iPhone was the leading OS, with its requests increasing from 33 percent to 55 percent over the year, while over the same period Symbian device requests fell from 43 percent to 18 percent.

Worldwide in February 2010 alone, the iPhone OS accounted for 50 percent of smartphone requests, with Android at 24 percent, followed by Symbian with 18 percent and RIM with 4 percent. In the United States, however, Android is gaining ground on the iPhone more quickly.

While in November 2009, the iPhone was responsible for 55 percent of U.S. smartphone requests, to Android’s 27 percent, by January 2010, those numbers adjusted to 47 percent for Apple and 38 percent Android. And in February 2010, the percentages slid again toward a more even 44 percent for the iPhone OS and 42 percent for Android.

Apple, surely, has taken note of the Google OS on its heels, and analysts have suggested that Apple’s lawsuit against HTC has come at a time of pariculalry strong growth for Android, partly at the expense of the iPhone.

A March 1 report from Quantcast showed the iPhone claiming 63.7 percent of mobile Web consumption in North America in February, while Android held 15.2 percent. The figures, however, represented a 3.2 percent monthly decline for Apple, but an 8.3 percent jump for Android.

The good news for Apple, however, was that 11 percent of the smartphone users surveyed by AdMob in February said that they were interested in purchasing an Apple iPad.

“As more mobile Internet devices [such as the iPad] are introduced into the market, it will be interesting to see how traffic from the category grows, relative to smartphones and feature phones,” AdMob wrote on its blog, where the full report is available.

Resource:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/iPhone-Dominates-but-Android-is-Fastest-Growing-OS-Report-374125/

According to Gartner, two new versions of Bluetooth wireless technology will emerge by 2011. Bluetooth 3 will emerge to enable faster data transmission, and Bluetooth 4 will introduce a new low-energy (LE) mode that will enable communication with external peripherals and sensors. Both versions will include other technical improvements to improve battery life and security. Gartner believes that Bluetooth 3 will facilitate corporate and consumer functions demanding large bandwidth like downloading images and videos from handsets. Bluetooth LE will enable a range of new sensor-based business models in industries such as fitness, healthcare and environmental control.

By 2011, over 85% of the handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser. In mature markets such as Western Europe and Japan, about 60% of the handsets shipped will be smartphones with sophisticated browsing capability and the ability to render conventional HTML sites in some manner.

“Mobile technologies will evolve in ways that affect corporate strategies, significant numbers of customers or employees will adopt or expect them, or they will address particular mobile challenges that organisations will face through 2011,” said Nick Jones, vice-president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

By the end of 2011, over 75% of devices shipped in mature markets will include a GPS. GPS will be the primary, but not the only, means of establishing handset locations. Wi-Fi and cell ID systems will remain important in situations where GPS is unavailable or unreliable.

Mobile widgets will also become popular. Widgets are installable web applications that use technologies such as JavaScript and HTML. Many handsets support widgets running on their home screens, where they are easily visible and accessible.

Mobile platforms will become more diverse through 2012, although consolidation will not have started, and in some markets, five or more platforms may have a significant presence. Mobile application stores will be the primary, and in some cases, the only way to distribute applications to smartphones and other mobile devices, says the research firm. App stores also provide a range of business support functions, such as payment processing that assist smaller organisations.

They will be a distribution channel for mobile applications and a commercial channel to sell applications and content, especially in international markets. Many applications will exploit eco-system cloud services. Touchscreens are emerging as the dominant user interface for large-screen handsets and will be included in over 60% of the mobile devices shipped in Western Europe and North America in 2011.

In 2010-11, the availability of multi-megabit wireless broadband performance will continue to grow, because mobile networks enhance their broadband performance. Embedded cellular networking will become a standard feature of many corporate laptops, and will enable new types of network-connected devices and business models such as e-books and media players.

Resource:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/telecom/Mobile-space-to-buzz-with-10-new-technologies-by-2011/articleshow/5720791.cms

In a statement about the acquisition, Nokia declares “Novarra’s mobile browser and services platform will be used by Nokia to deliver enhanced Internet experiences on Nokia mobile devices.” Novarra will enable Nokia to deliver an improved mobile Web experience to customers. However, the Novarra acquisition will probably have little effect on customers in the United States.

While Nokia is the largest maker of mobile phones in the world, it plays a more obscure role in the market in America. The most recent comScore survey places Nokia in fourth place for mobile phones in the United States, with just over nine percent market share.

Drilling down more specifically to smartphones, Nokia isn’t even on the radar. RIM’s BlackBerry is the leading smartphone platform in the U.S., followed by the iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Android. Even Palm’s faltering WebOS platform manages a fifth place position with nearly six percent of the smartphone market.

“Connecting the next billion consumers to the Internet will happen primarily on mobile devices,” said Niklas Savander, executive vice president of Services for Nokiain the Nokia statement, adding “and delivering an optimized internet experience on our devices is core to our mission. By driving innovation in all segments of our portfolio, we are building one of the largest consumer audiences for web services and content. Novarra’s Internet services technology delivered on the world’s most widely-used mobile platform, Nokia’s Series 40, will help us achieve this.”

To its credit, Nokia has been working aggressively to regain some swagger and find the edge it once had among mobile phones. Nokia is engaged in a back and forth legal struggle with Apple over patent infringement allegations–Nokia claims Apple is violating its patents, and Apple accuses Nokia of the same. Nokia also formed an alliance with Intel to combine their Linux-based mobile operating systems to create MeeGo.

Opera might have been a better acquisition for Nokia. I expect it would have cost significantly more, but it would have given Nokia an established mobile browser ready to compete on a broad range of smartphone platforms–including the iPhone if Apple approves Opera’s app.

While the Novarra Web browser may not make much of a splash in the United States, the Novarra technology is indicative of the direction that mobile Web browsers are going to meet the needs of next-generation smartphones and mobile platforms like the iPad.

Wireless broadband bandwidth is crowded, and most data plans charge per megabyte or have a maximum download capacity per month. Web browsers like Novarra’s, that can compress data for faster rendering and less bandwidth consumption, give smartphones an edge over competition.

Business professionals on the go need a mobile Web browser that is able to maximize the available wireless bandwidth and deliver a blazing fast Web surfing experience from a mobile platform. Browsers like Opera and Novarra provide the innovative technology necessary to meet those demands.

Novarra is not built on Webkit–the de facto standard rendering engine for smartphone platforms. However, Novarra has a Youtube video demonstrating that its Vision browser actually renders Web pages faster than competing mobile browsers designed on Webkit.

The Vision browser supports Adobe Flash, and includes other innovative features like password management, and the ability to manipulate Web pages to fit the screen of the device being used.

Novarra currently works with Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG, and other mobile phone manufacturers–providing Nokia with an established client portfolio for its new mobile Web browser.

Resource:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/192644/nokia_joins_battle_for_mobile_web_with_novarra_acquisition.html