Mobile computers have transformed the way companies conduct business to a great extent by improving daily workflows across a wide range of industries.

Mobile computers have a significant impact in the manufacturing industry, where the workers are mobile and not chained to a workstation.

Here are five ways mobile computers improve the manufacturing process:

Tracking work-in-progress 

Accurately tracking the status of work in progress is important for manufacturing operations. Without a clear inventory of products and components and where they stand through the production process, assessing the manufacturing needs is not possible.

Mobile computers help manufacturers integrate smart manufacturing capacities that boost work in progress tracking, enabling manufacturers to ensure that the production process has full visibility and traceability. 

Finished goods inventory

Up-to-date finished goods inventory count is essential to fulfill customer orders. A lack of visibility into the products that are ready to be shipped to customers can lead to customer dissatisfaction and costly delays.

Mobile computers help streamline and automate data capture, making it easy to keep accurate tabs on finished goods.

Order picking

Inefficient order picking can hinder any manufacturing operation, as human errors often create significant inventory problems, leading to wasted labor and additional manual work.

Mobile computers can resolve order picking issues by requiring items to be scanned, errors to be captured at the point of picking and can also be deployed at scale to help all employees follow highly efficient workflows.

Real-time visibility

Real-time visibility and tracking is important to customers, suppliers and other supply chain partners, just as they are to manufacturers. Real-time insights can help plan the operations, schedule labor and adjust resources when there are delays or even spike in demand. Of course, real-time visibility and tracking also helps anticipate and respond to potential supply chain disruptions, helping to increase agility.

Shipping validation

Mobile computers play a major role in accurately validating shipping. Mobile computers can communicate with wireless label printers to create shipping labels in a fully automated process. Scanning these labels can update backend inventory management systems for accurate inventory tracking as well as detailed analytics.

A smooth production process is of utmost importance to a healthy business. In today’s competitive industry, where marginal improvements can translate to major gains, one of the best means to improve manufacturing efficiency is mobile computers.