Shop Floor Mobile - Tablet

We are looking at giving our Material Handlers and Supervisors a rugged tablet to run Shop Floor Mobile on. We already have implemented Wifi in the Shop in preparation for this amongst other things, so connectivity should not be a concern.

We also utilize BTS/Labels, so we are considering using a Tablet with a barcode scanner built in, opposed to a bluetooth or other peripheral device.

Does anyone have experience with using these rugged tablets in their shop? What was your experience, and which one did you go with?

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VISUAL - Enterprise General Discussions

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unknown

I can't help with the experience part, but your post interests me in regards to shop floor mobile. I was told the only way to run Visual was through a Surface tablet and that no app existed. Is this something new? I'd love to go mobile and have been looking at Power BI as an option.

mseppanen

www.youtube.com/watch

Yes, in 8X and beyond there is a web app that interfaces with Visual, much improved in 9X. Keep in mind this is not Visual itself running on a tablet, but an application that interfaces with it. It does Scheduling Display, Labor Scanning (with Labor licenses), and Material Issuing (with Material Licenses), with a computer or touchscreen interface.

It's pretty neato, but it is not a reporting tool, nor a replacement for the functionality of Visual.

To run Visual proper on a tablet would still require a full Windows OS install, so you'd be tied to a Surface.

unknown

We started using PowerBI for reporting and building dashboards at the beginning of this year. I have to say it's an extremely powerful tool.. We use it for scheduling and really every other facet of the business. They have add-on applications such as forms that you can throw into the reports which allows users to submit requests, etc and email logic to send it to the correct group.

We've explored all the options out there and found PowerBI the most useful and cost effective.

unknown

We recently (this week) are rolling out Shop Floor Mobile Inventory Trans Entry to our shop floor. We have been long time users of BTS but the program just has too many issues with connectivity. We have been using BTS on Windows OS tablets with a USB barcode reader attached for some time. In the past we have used Symbol/Motorola handscanners which have a screen on them but the wifi hardware and operating systems are so old that they just couldnt keep up with the new wifi in our facility. Our users love Shop Floor Mobile over BTS. We will keep using BTS for part of our operations as Shop Floor Mobile does not yet support Shipping Entry (picking Customer Orders). We do not have any intention of rolling out Shop Floor Mobile Labor at this time. Happy to answer any questions you might have.

mseppanen

Interesting, what type of tablet have you been issuing your people for BTS? Have you encountered any problems with the peripheral Scan gun?

I've been debating the Sincoole brand tablets that are integrated with a barcode scanner.

www.newegg.com/.../Product.aspx

unknown

We are running BTS on a Dell Latitude 5290 tablet. We are using a USB Motorola Symbol LS2208 scanner. Have had no issues with the scanner. We have lots of barcode labels throughout our warehouse and we just program the scanners to append ENTER or TAB (can't remember) after each scan. Makes quick work of BTS transactions. The tablets are far superior at holding a stable wifi connection versus our older scanners with builtin screens. I believe we looked at using the integrated camera on the tablet and we just couldnt get it to work with ease for the user. There was too much switching between the camera application and the telnet application. The USB scanner allows you to never leave the telnet window.

unknown

what was your cost to use Power Bi and did you build your own warehouse(cubes) or are there sufficient queries directly from the visual database.

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