We use hand held scanners. We do not use the piece for labor cost tracking, so I can't speak on that. We do receive PO's, issue materials and use scan ship programs; we have lot control on almost every item. The most consistent problem we run into is trying to log onto the hand helds and receive an error: unable to log on, data dictionary error. We don't have a high-tech IT department to spend time looking at this, so a reboot of the terminal server usually fixes this. We are happy with the hand held programs and they work well for us.
Some issues include:
- It appears when using the hand helds you can release an item that we don't have enough on-hand, while the release SO won't allow for that. There may be a default setting I haven't set to fix this; not sure.
- Using the hand held program for SO's - if an item is on back order, we obviously don't scan it and therefore it doesn't show up on the invoice as a back order - it's just not on the invoice at all. The customer then may think we just missed that item.
- For issue materials - depending on how you do it now, it is just as easy for human error to miss scanning an item. There isn't an error message saying hey - you should have scanned item XYZ but didn't. We simply have our workers print materials issued and require them to verify materials issued as to catch errors right away.
Other than those few issues that come to mind right away - we love the hand held programs and they work very well for us. Feel free to contact me if you have specific questions.
Regards,
Dawn Johnson
EVP
Comfort Foods Inc
dawn@comfortfoods.com