Food Logistics serves the entire food supply chain industry with targeted content for manufacturers, retailers, and distributors.
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SECTOR REPORTS SO FTWARE & TE CH NOLOG Y: LA BOR MGM T. SO LUTIONS Mobile Apps Bring Labor Solutions to the Warehouse Floor And supervisors see the time-saving benefits. By Peter Schnorbach I www.foodlogistics.com © iStockphot/Thinkstock t's been fve-plus years since the iPhone and the App store kicked of the modern mobile technology boom. Since then, we've seen how quickly mobile devices have become a real game changer for businesses. Take for example the retail sector. Consumers love to shop with their smartphones and tablets, while retailers big and small have embraced mobile devices for all manner of tasks from sales to service to inventory management. Now, mobile devices are just beginning to make inroads with supply chain management software. Technology vendors are accelerating their efforts to develop new products and add mobility to existing offerings. At Manhattan Associates, customer demand to "make it mobile" has prompted us to create a development team dedicated to mobile applications that extend the reach of Manhattan's Supply Chain Commerce solutions. We're already there with mobile apps for Store Inventory, Supplier Enablement, and Mobile Supply Chain Intelligence. But more and more customers are asking us for ways to leverage mobile technologies throughout their distribution operations, particularly for their labor supervision within the warehouse. Let me explain why this matters. In any warehouse environment, supervisors are responsible for many day-to-day tasks that need to be done for employees: people forgetting to clock in, people forgetting to clock out, people wanting to know where they stand in terms of their productivity. Supervisors need to understand where bottlenecks are forming, and where the activities are not being performed at the productivity levels that they should be. There's also a lot of coaching involved—supervisors need to train and monitor new hires and as well as observe underperformers. And all throughout the process, supervisors are expected to provide feedback to employees. Supervisors need to be maximizing the Manhattan Associates is responding to customers' demands to "make it mobile" with a dedicated development team that is creating mobile apps for supply chains. hours they spend on the floor engaged with and observing employees. The conundrum? Most labor management technology and tools are only accessible via that computer back in their office. Let's face it—a supervisor's day still involves a lot of running back and forth between the warehouse floor and their offices, where the labor management software lives only on their desktop. In this age of mobile technology, the act of having to run back to your computer to get information almost seems archaic. So, how do you reconcile that reality with the need to streamline operations with a higher supervisor to employee ratio? By putting that power at the supervisor's fingertips, using dashboard-enabled mobile devices to monitor, reward or coach outlying performers on the spot. For customers using Manhattan Labor Management, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. One large retail customer told us that prior to the introduction of mobile devices, their supervisor spent 75 percent of their time in their offices and only 25 percent of their time on the floor. After deploying mobile devices, their supervisors now spend 75 percent of their time on the floor with the employees. This increase in face time is huge. Mobile apps can free a supervisor to spend less time on paperwork and more time on engagement. And, this shift to more time on the floor hasn't gone unnoticed by employees. Customers tell us that mobile apps are actually improving the relationship between the supervisor and the employee. Supervisors have more quality time to spend with that employee one on one, improving morale and enhancing productivity. Here's an example: let's say an employee wants to know what their quality rating is. In most DCs today, a supervisor would have to take a note, go back to their office, look it up, and then go back out on the floor and tell the employee. They get those requests all the time, and sometimes they're able to FOOD LOGISTICS • OCTOBER 2013 39