Reynolds IT director Richard Calder: The best enterprise app ideas have come from the shop floor

App developers at food distributor Reynolds work alongside shopfloor staff on enterprise apps

The best enterprise apps come from rank-and-file staff on the shop floor, Richard Calder, IT director at food distributor Reynolds, has claimed.

As a result, added Calder, the IT team at Reynolds not only talks regularly to staff across the organisation about their IT needs, but will also be embedded with them when new apps and app functions are rolled out.

The company became more proactive in terms of writing and rolling out apps, particularly mobile apps, after it implemented its Infor M3 ERP system in October 2010. Since then, it has rolled out Android handheld devices to delivery drivers and a mobile system for warehouse pickers and packers.

"For a lot of the enhancements to the applications that we have written, the suggestions and feedback that we've got that have been most effective have come from the shop floor," Reynolds told Computing.

"Drivers would say, ‘Wouldn't it be good if we could do this, because it would mean that I wouldn't have to hold a paper invoice and could check everything in on the back of my vehicle before I leave. That would save me a lot of time'," added Calder.

Furthermore, the areas of the business where resistance to such digitisation had been expected proved to be the most welcoming, said Calder.

At the same time, however, the pervasiveness of consumer technology has radically increased expectations among ordinary members of staff in terms of functionality and, in particular, user interfaces - something IT departments have, historically, not been so good at designing.

"We spend a lot of time on the design phase. I think the mistake that some people made is to build for Android or iOS apps exactly what the old Windows Mobile app does," said Calder.

And the development of mobile apps for warehouse staff was aided by IT staff shadowing warehouse workers, Calder continued.

"We went round with the pickers. We went round at night and saw what their frustrations were. It's about taking out the unnecessary steps when, for example, you don't want to go back to the office [for the next customer order], you want the task to be pushed out.

"That's relatively straightforward. Then, you want to be told where to go. You want certain things to be done automatically on the device. You want the scanning to be easy - you don't want to be pressing a button on the side of the device. So all of those things we built-in, spending a lot of time on that side of it, and it helped that we took the time to understand the operation."

Next steps, Calder told Computing, may even involve algorithms that can guide pickers around the warehouse with the most optimal route. Further work is planned to improve precise locating of pickers and replenishment forklift drivers within the warehouse so that tasks are pushed to those closest physically to where the task needs to be done thus reducing distance travelled by warehouse operatives and thereby overall efficiency.

"It's a difficult job in the warehouse. Working at three or four degrees for eight hours, it's never going to be a super-fun job. But there are ways we can make the process simpler and more efficient. The picker will often know the most efficient way of picking and it's getting some of that intelligence in there along with some of the various algorithms," said Calder.

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