When thinking of an industrial printer, you may think of a big, rugged printer that stays in one place and is never moved. In many industrial setting this is true, but many warehouse settings are looking to mobile printers in addition to the standard industrial printers to expedite their operations.
There are a handful of ways that a mobile industrial printer can save you money and deliver a quick return on investment. Not only can the benefits improve specific worker productivity and decrease errors, but also improve essential day-to-day tasks within areas of the warehouse such as receiving, quality assurance, picking, finished goods packaging, and ship to order.
Worker
One of the most effective solutions to save time and money lies within the location of your barcode printer. Every time a worker walks to a centralized printer to collect labels, they are taking away valuable minutes from their true job function. With wireless and cart-based barcode printers, you’re able to print labels when and where they’re needed. You eliminate time-wasting trips to a centralized printer and also ensure the right label is placed on the right item, boosting accuracy and customer satisfaction with shipments. And, you’ll process more items in less time.
Further, the time away from the worker’s job location also has the potential to cause distractions leading to more time wasted and the chance of mislabeling. Wasted time and distraction may be considered business as usual, but with a barcode control system in place error can be reduced to as low as 1 percent which is significantly lower than a system void of this control.
The following are areas of the warehouse or distribution centers that will benefit from mobile industrial printers:
Receiving
In the event that labels are pre-printed for incoming shipments after receiving the proper information from the supplier, a couple inefficiencies occur. When the shipment arrives, the worker must walk to the office in which the labels are held then return to his or her worksite to start labeling. This requires a full round trip to the office and back and increases the probability that the shipment will be mislabeled.
Forklift mounted label printers can apply the labels to incoming materials as they are unloaded. This not only ensures that the right label is on the right material, but also guarantees that every incoming item is labeled and accounted for.
Quality Assurance
Inspectors can benefit from mobile printing by utilizing labels as identifiers of quality. Incoming items can be tagged to be tested and then relabeled after testing to indicate whether or not it is a “pass,” “rework,” or “reject” item. Using barcode labels for this task makes tags legible and reduces misidentified items.
Picking
Wireless LAN and mobile printers can prove to be very valuable when picking items off a warehouse shelf. They enable the operators to pick multiple orders at the same time in a small area of the warehouse. This creates efficient routes and reduces time driving around the warehouse. A label is placed on the item that will be scanned in the packaging area to expedite sorting of specific shipments.
Finished Goods Packaging
Much like picking, mobile printers also provide benefits to finished goods packaging. When kitting takes place or a specific order is put together, a label can be produced that indicates a finished good. This reduces picking errors for look-alike items and also can provide the worker with specific configuration information for that item.
Ship to Order
Similar to finished goods packaging, ship to order verifies that all items required to ship have been picked, packed and no duplicates are present.
These are only some of the benefits that mobile industrial printers bring to the warehouse space. They provide accuracy, cost savings, reduced errors, higher worker productivity and a quick return on your investment.
To learn more about industrial printing visit the Light Industrial Printing Knowledge Center at Ryzex.
http://www.ryzex.com/light-industrial-printing-knowledge-center.aspx.
Filed under: Industrial Printing | Tagged: Mobile Industrial Printers, Mobile Printers, Warehouse Printers
