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Magazine Article, Source : The Manufacturer
Zone : IT in manufacturing
Published : July 2005

After all the hype and advances in technology, to what extent is mobile working part of manufacturing, asks Anne Edwards, and can it be operated securely?

Consider the similarities between Anneka Rice in the TV game show Treasure Hunt and warehouse pickers. Surprisingly, perhaps, there is one. As long ago as December 1982, Ms Rice – either in a helicopter or on the ground – received clues from the studio to direct her next move and provided updates on her progress using a headset plugged into a temperamental two-way radio link attached to a belt. Twenty three years later, numerous warehouses are enjoying increases in productivity and accuracy levels of 99.9 per cent, thanks to the technology delivered by ‘hands-free, eyes-free’ headset and belt combination of wearable computers that guide and monitor picking staff, giving instructions and logging their actions.

Today’s ‘pick-to-voice’ market leader Vocollect may have launched in 1987 but it had to wait for its voice-activated technology – originally used for vehicle inspection – to become commercially rugged enough to cope with the demands of its wireless Talkman units.

Similarly, developments in Bluetooth technology have moved what was once the preserve of personal communications applications into industrial markets, where it’s becoming increasingly important for laptops, mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) to synchronise data with fixed items like PCs.

And it seems that the prediction of three years ago – that radio frequency identification (RFID) tags would challenge barcoding’s track and trace supremacy – is slowly being realised.

Perhaps mobile working in manufacturing is catching up with other sectors.

“The face of corporate computing has changed dramatically over the last five years,” noted NetManage, a US-based supplier of solutions for integrating, web-enabling and accessing enterprise information systems, in its A Mobile Device White Paper, published this February. “When it comes to the benefits of mobile technology in the enterprise, most companies cited better employee productivity as the major gain, with the advantages of real-time access to corporate information as a close second.”

It continued: “Forrester defined mobile enterprise technology as a set of technologies – including networks, infrastructure and portable devices – that enable employees and systems to use applications in a mobile environment. Key deliverables include a boost in customer service, an increase in productivity and a reduction in costs.”

UK manufacturing’s experience largely reflects this. Before joining Business Link as a sector manager with responsibility for manufacturing, Mark Knowlton was manufacturing director of the UK arm of Steelcase, a global office furniture company. “If I knew then what I do now, I would’ve done things very differently,” he said. Knowlton wasn’t intimating that mobile working options would have prevented work transferring to continental Europe, rather that his day-to-day use of BlackBerry technology with Business Link has highlighted its benefits.

“Steelcase’s maintenance workers were often on call and hard to contact when on night shift,” he said. “Something like BlackBerry would’ve allowed instant contact and, possibly, an easier response than going into the plant to resolve the problem.”

With managerial roles for manufacturing and operations directors changing to include multi-site working and placing greater emphasis on client visits, Knowlton insists that BlackBerry’s business benefits are huge. Its real-time calendar and on-demand email access mean everyone’s informed and able to take advantage of what could otherwise be dead time between meetings.

Apart from its relatively slow and limited downloading of attachments, Knowlton is clearly a fan of his ‘always on, always connected’ BlackBerry, which also includes a contacts book, web browser and mobile phone facilities, although he’s not convinced that his wife is as keen. “You have to learn to switch it off and redirect emails while you’re on holiday,” he said. “And people in meetings really need to be ‘in the room’ to focus on what’s going on rather than disruptively monitoring incoming messages.”

Sometimes though, text and voice messaging services are the only way to ensure urgent messages get to the right people at the right time. Eaton MEM is supplying low voltage distribution equipment, project management services and start-up support, valued at more than £8 million, for Heathrow Airport’s new Terminal 5 and chose an existing supplier, Vodafone, to provide a simple, low-cost messaging facility.

“We wanted some kind of SMS system that could send out messages when we needed to get through quickly,” said Nigel Birch, customer services manager, UK and Ireland. “One of the main benefits of Vodafone Rapide is we have been able to contact some key accounts on site when they are not always obtainable by phone or linked to email.”

The solution, which circulates typed ‘blast messages’ from one desktop PC terminal directly to the handsets of a predetermined group of any number of recipients, has been made available to Eaton’s office-based sales staff and managers, 120 on-the-road sales engineers, and can include selected customers. It ultimately aims to cut costs by five per cent and has already saved “a lot of money”, prompting plans to extend its use throughout other areas of Eaton’s European operation.

And on the subject of the supply chain, both Varian Medical Systems and 60 of its suppliers have benefited from a web-based forecasting system that provides access to the Crawley-based cancer care company’s radiotherapy solutions manufacturing plan. This vendor portal receives weekly downloads from Varian’s SAP ERP system and sends an automatic email to all suppliers, allowing them to receive order requests and plan deliveries up to two days earlier than the old manual method.

“It saves eight hours a week on admin,” noted manufacturing manager Derek Flanagan, highlighting the speed of automatic emails, acknowledgement of receipt and exception reporting as a vast improvement on faxing. Since its implementation in 1999, the system has gradually been enhanced to include: a 12 month rolling forecast; monthly supplier quality and delivery information; engineering drawings; and a message board. “All have helped improve vendor delivery performance, which is good news for production,” he added. It’s also a password-protected extranet, only allowing access to authorised users.

Understandably, IT security is a concern for many. The risk of malware accessing networks via mobile devices is the biggest fear of 46 per cent of enterprise IT managers, including manufacturers from the UK, Germany and France. Despite this, only 11 per cent of the 300 respondents to LANDesk Software’s April 2005 survey thought that the deployment of mobile technology should be restricted.

“Security vulnerabilities are increasing in number and severity and the continuing rise of mobile devices is only exacerbating the situation. Controlling it comes down to management,” commented Andrew Brown, programme manager at analyst IDC, in response.

Steve Pluta, head of O2 systems architecture group, agrees, confirming that keeping up with security threats is ‘business as usual’ for any large organisation. “We’re constantly working on simplifying network access without compromising security,” he said. Pluta recommends that access is limited to the application(s) needed for the job and includes network connection from one specific point and phone number with a user ID and password during restricted hours. “But,” he warns, “it’s very difficult to stop rogue employees with legitimate rights to the network.”

For the 100 IT directors of manufacturing companies polled by business management software provider Touchpaper in May 2005, the most pressing problems for remote workers are security breaches and virus protection at 88 and 92 per cent, respectively.

Russell Ryan, global windows administrator at Colorcon, a film coating, pharmaceutical dosage form, non-toxic printing inks and food colorant manufacturer, had to tackle a virus infection last year. “One site was infected by a flavour of the Netsky virus that was looking for SMTP servers. Basically someone had caught it via their laptop on the day it came into the wild and when they reconnected to the network it overloaded one of our mail servers,” he explained.

“It didn’t require the user to do anything more than connect his laptop to the internet; it forced itself to be executed due to the security flaw in the Windows 2000 operating system.”

Fortunately, in this instance, impact was minimal, effecting only one office. “The main time lost was in IT tracking the outbreak and shutting off infected machines from the network. We didn’t suffer any downtime in our production to despatch areas,” Ryan said.

Colorcon asked its main reseller, PCS Business Systems, for advice and, after a successful trial, is rolling-out Websense’s CPM solution. This helps tackle Ryan’s dual-pronged security focus of zero day protection from viruses and developing a consistent standard for the company’s laptops, which can miss out on security patch updates simply because they aren’t connected to the core network often enough. “Our security procedures weren’t changed as a direct result of this incident but have evolved as new technology has become available to help protect our remote machines. As our virus attack proves, you are only as secure as your weakest link,” Ryan concluded.

So, although technological advances continue to enhance mobile applications, it’s worth remembering that whatever benefits remote working brings, these could be seriously compromised, or amount to nothing, if your IT security provisions aren’t up to speed.

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