Many companies are working to get every bit of use out of their existing equipment in their warehouse operations, while trying to reduce overhead costs at the same time. As a result, this has forced an awareness of the importance of support and maintenance services to keep data collection equipment in good working order, and protecting their business during failures. Maintaining adequate support and service:
- Increases device reliability
- Reduces downtime
- Increases life of assets
- Increases productivity
In today’s economic environment, it is especially important to have the ability to maintain efficient warehouse operations. The average SMB may experience as many as 20 hours of business downtime each year, with aging equipment and external forces (weather, construction, etc.) being the two main causes. When these failures occur during business hours, companies run the risk of losing revenue through loss of production, customers taking their business elsewhere and errors that lead to lost orders. On average, losses could rise above $50,000 an hour.
When companies follow industry best practices in the warehouse, equipment downtime can easily be reduced – as much as 25% per year. Best practices include using products that are best suited for the application (in terms of durability and reliability), strengthening of network security, and solutions that protect data assets.
When it comes to mobile devices in particular, TCO is an effective tool when looking at reliability and durability. For industrial applications, some devices last 4+ years, where other devices may only last half as long. When calculating TCO on a mobile device, you will want to consider more than the cost of the device and any maintenance packages that go along with it. In fact, according to some major industry manufacturers, replacement costs of a device are just a small portion of the entire cost of ownership figure because when you factor in other losses such as lost revenue due to downtime, the sale price is actually less than one-third of its total cost of ownership. It’s actually the downtime that costs more than it would to repair or replace a device.
Maintaining Up-Time
In mobile and handheld applications, workers could lose more than an hour of productivity each time their bar code scanning device fails. When their device fails they lose ability to record or obtain information and cause a bottleneck in the workflow. This, in turn, may result in the possibility of missed shipments, lost orders and customer dissatisfaction. When failures occur, workers are forced into a manual process which could easily result in the recording of incorrect information, the inability to process a work order due to lack of information needed to complete the task, and a slowdown in productivity overall. For a field service application, manual operations could lead to errors that result in incorrect scheduling, billing and lost business.
So as you evaluate your assets this year, take note of how well your equipment matches up to your application – along with the overall performance and age of each device. For strong TCO (and ROI), two of the most important features your device will need are long life and reliable performance.
For more information on how and when to upgrade your mobile computers and handheld scanning devices, contact us for a complimentary evaluation of your operations.