Ryzex works with a leading retailer to significantly enhance operational efficiencies with the Intermec CK3

EVERETT, Wash., Mar. 2009 – Intermec Technologies (NYSE: IN) today announced that Home Hardware Stores Limited, Canada’s largest independent hardware, lumber, building materials and furniture retailer, has selected the Intermec CK3 mobile computer for use across its over 1,000 retail stores. The CK3 will be used to help manage the retailer’s more than 60,000 items and accompany its in-store POS (point of sale) operations. The solution will deliver considerable improvements and increased efficiencies in inventory management, store ordering, and pricing and promotions for each independent store Dealer.

“We’ve been working with Ryzex for a few years and they appreciate the challenges involved with running a retail operation; we selected the Intermec CK3 because of the broad feature set and ease of use of the CK3 that will enable our Dealers to streamline operations, while improving the customer experience,” said Keith Hunt, Director of Retail Applications for Home Hardware. “Lastly, the positive feedback from our dealers was influential in the selection of the Intermec solution.”

Home Hardware recognized the need to introduce a solution that would be accepted by its more than thousand dealers and solicited feedback about the CK3 from the dealers and from various parties across its organization spanning from management to the helpdesk.

“Our relationship with Home Hardware has enabled us to truly understand their operations and provide quality counsel regarding the leading AIDC solutions that will empower them to efficiently manage their inventory,” said Ken Rayner, General Manager, Ryzex Canada. “We recommended the Intermec CK3 because it was the best solution in the industry that could effectively meet their business needs and seamlessly integrate with their current software and systems.”

The Intermec CK3 mobile computer is well suited for rugged environments providing excellent performance for critical mainline applications while having the flexibility to easily add capabilities like voice/speech and RFID, giving investment protection for the future.

“The highly adaptable data and image capture capabilities of the CK3 empowers businesses like Home Hardware to maximize efficiencies and reduce costs,” said Brian Schulte, Industry Marketing Director, Retail, Intermec. “We are very excited that Home Hardware has decided to add the CK3 to its IT arsenal after its highly competitive review of handheld computers, and look forward to seeing the positive results it helps drive.”

About Intermec
Intermec Inc. (NYSE:IN) develops and integrates products, services and technologies that identify, track and manage supply chain assets and information. Core technologies include mobile computing and data collection systems, bar code printers, label media, and RFID. The company’s products and services are used by customers in many industries worldwide to improve the productivity, quality and responsiveness of business operations. For more information about Intermec, visit www.intermec.com or call 800-347-2636.

Bellingham, Wa (PRWEB) June 2, 2009 — Ryzex today announced that Bellingham Cold Storage (BCS), the largest portside refrigerated storage company on the West Coast, has selected a portable barcode scanner solution from Ryzex and Psion Teklogix to increase productivity, lower the risk of errors and provide a better value for their customers – all at the lowest total cost of ownership.
With increased emphasis on food safety, illustrated by the recent introduction of the Produce Traceability Initiative, it’s more important than ever that BCS guarantee their customers’ perishable products are handled efficiently and documented properly. While BCS maintains high standards and was able to meet this customer requirement, an upgraded barcode system improves their tracking capabilities, giving them a distinct competitive advantage.
“By partnering with Ryzex, BCS now has a solution that surpasses our customers’ needs and reduces our operational costs”, says Nancy Waterman, IT Manager for BCS.
Working with Psion Teklogix, Ryzex helped BCS choose the best handheld barcode scanner solution for their needs. BCS wanted a rugged mobile computer that could withstand their unusually harsh environment. With a high drop rating, extreme temperature capabilities and ergonomic design, the Psion Teklogix 7530 and 7535 from the Psion series were ideal.
BCS is now able to offer better solutions to their customers. With a more dependable system, increased productivity, efficiency and accuracy, BCS can lower operational costs by reducing the risk of errors and standardizing their operations.

About Ryzex
Ryzex is a full-service mobile technology company, focusing on automated data collection (ADC) solutions. With 20 years in business, more than 6,000 customers worldwide rely on Ryzex products and services, getting maximum lifetime return on their barcode, RFID and ADC systems. Products include new and refurbished devices, repair, buyback and rental programs, and installation and integration services. Ryzex sells equipment from all major data collection manufacturers and has 350 employees across North America and Europe. www.ryzex.com

One of the best developments of 2D barcode scanner technology is the release of several high speed digital imagers specifically engineered for reading 2D barcodes. These digital imagers can be found in many forms, including extremely small imagers in cell phones and PDA’s, to purpose built rugged portable data collection computers with high resolution imagers, to highly optimized optical imaging devices in commercial vision based systems.

By partnering a 2D barcode scanner with software, the manufacturers are able to use an image/picture to locate, resolve the barcode symbology, and decode the barcode in just a few milliseconds.

The advantage to 2D barcode is the ability to encode large amounts of information in a small physical area (like on the back of a Drivers License), or a small amount of lot code data in a very small area (like on the bottom of a test tube). This more efficient use of physical space can allow another remarkable characteristic to come forth, the ability to read a barcode more than 50 feet away (by making the 2D barcode 6 inches square or larger). There is 2D area imager and barcode scanner that can read both a 1D and 2D barcode from a few feet to more than 50 feet with the use of auto-focusing technology.

One of the best attributes of area imaging is the use of a 100% solid state optical design, eliminating moving parts. This feature has allowed most manufacturers of 2D barcode scanner technology to offer 5 year and longer warranties.

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.

There are many bar code printers to choose from, but how do you know which one will suit your needs the best? Determining the best printer for your needs can be daunting, and you may not know where to start. There are some basic questions you can ask yourself before shopping around. Once you have answered these questions, you will be better prepared to purchase a printer that gives you the best return on your investment.

• What type of environment will the printer be in? Will it be knocked down by forklifts; is it an abusive, rugged environment, or an office environment? What is the air like? Is there a lot of dirt or debris? Will the printer be operating in high humidity or extreme temperatures?

• What are your printing needs? Will you be printing standard stock labels or do you need to print in wide widths or use specialty media? Is barcode printer quality important to you?

• What is your duty cycle? How many labels will you be printing in a business day? Do you need mission critical 24/7 printing or will the printer be operating in a standard 8 hour shift?

• What is your Budget? How much money do you have to spend? What is the cost of the labels and print heads you will be using? What is the total cost of the printer over its lifetime and how much money do you have to spend upfront?

• Who will be using the thermal label printer? Will there be multiple people using the printer and is simplicity a major concern? Is it important to you to have a screen display? How easy is it to changing labels and ribbons? Does it have a media and ribbon window to know when media is about to run out?

• Does connectivity matter? Do you just need a USB, serial port, parallel, or Ethernet connection or are you looking for wireless capabilities?

Being prepared with these answers before you look to purchase a bar code printer will give you more time and flexibility to choose the one that’s right for you. There’s quite a bit of information on choosing thermal label printers at http://www.ryzex.com/light-industrial-printing-knowledge-center.aspx.

Most companies choose thermal technology to print bar codes due to the high print quality, flexibility with media, low-maintenance, and durable nature of the printers. There are two different thermal printing methods, though: direct thermal and thermal-transfer. Each method utilizes a thermal printhead to apply heat to the surface being printed, but the technologies differ slightly.

With direct thermal, the printer creates an image directly on the label and no ribbons, ink or toner are used. Instead, chemically treated, heat-sensitive media darkens when it passes under a thermal printhead. Direct thermal printers are durable, simple and easy to use. They cost less to operate than inkjet, laser, impact and thermal transfer printers. The media for direct-thermal printers is more sensitive to heat, light and abrasion, though. With direct thermal media, images can fade over time and if they are exposed to a lot of heat or light, the material can darken, making an image unreadable. So, direct thermal printers are not typically used for sensitive lifetime applications, but are often used for shipping labels, pick tickets, coupons, receipts, and tickets.

Thermal transfer printing melts ink onto the material by applying heat to a ribbon. The ink soaks into the material and becomes part of the media. If the label material and ribbon are properly matched, the image quality and durability of thermal transfer printing outlasts direct thermal printers. The printers can also accept a wider variety of media and create extremely durable asset tags, wristbands, certification labels, tags and tickets. Other archival-quality labels can be created to withstand temperature extremes, ultraviolet light, sterilization chemicals and more. This can be especially useful with circuit board tracking, asset tagging, inventory control, laboratory specimens, cold storage and outdoor applications.

It’s important to think about all of your needs when determining which barcode printer is right for your application. While direct thermal printers may be sufficient for most circumstances, thermal transfer printers are needed for special applications. There’s quite a bit of information on choosing thermal label printers at http://www.ryzex.com/light-industrial-printing-knowledge-center.aspx.

Having been in data collection for the past umpteen years, I have seen a lot of terminals come and go. From the earliest Symbol batch units, up to the current crop of WM 6 terminals – a lot has changed.

One thing that remains constant though, is the need for “good old workhorse terminals” for the Warehousing and Distribution market. There are literally thousands of Intermec, Symbol and Teklogix units who are old enough to vote and in some cases even drink, that are still the mainstay of high volume Warehouse/Order pick/Ship operations. Why? Because they are simple, and they simply work.

I cut my teeth on a lot of these very terminals: the Symbol LRT 3805’s, Norand 1700’s and the Intermec Antares lines. They weren’t fancy, they ran a version of DOS, and usually all relied on VT/IBM Terminal Emulation to make them useful. Recently, an Intermec 2435 came across my desk, and I was reminded of the simple utility and reliability of these devices.

The Intermec 2435 was kind of a plateau device for it’s type. Yes, it feels like you can hammer nails with it, but you also have the sense that it can last for years of dropping and getting bumped around in a warehouse and not go on the fritz if it has a rough day. This terminal features a clear 31 line character display (21 wide) that is easy to read and refreshes quickly. Most TE programs are concise and not verbose, with a quick Scan-Prompt cadence to them, and the 2435 is perfectly suited for that.

Since it is a relatively modest terminal, the battery life is excellent, often lasting a shift and one half of moderate scanning, and even longer if docked in a desktop or vehicle mount charging cradle. Many units shipped with a built in long range scanner (over 6′) and all 2435’s came with built in 802.11b WiFi radios. Although there was a freezer option, the standard terminal is rated for use from -4 to 122F, which covers 80% of use situations, in my experience. Most implementations I was involved with used the 39 key version (using scanning mostly, with some numeric entry), though a smaller keyed 59 key version with full alpha was available.

I have seen these configured with serial printers attached to their MiniDIN connector; the 2435 also features a decoded/undecoded 9 pin connector for other scanning options (like a Lorax long range scanner). External scanners do make it more difficult to use with a dock though, and can affect battery life if used frequently.

The TE options are the standard text based VT/ANSI or IBM 5250/3270, and these terminals came with overlays that represented the different key maps. In fact, many WMS systems still use this as a primary interface for portable terminals: SAP, JD Edwards, MAN-MAN, Catalyst, etc. Other systems can easily be reformatted to display everything up in the upper left corner of a standard screen, and only be 21 x 31, and make supporting the application very, very easy.

Yes they are simple, but then, they simply work. Easy to support and deploy, they are still among my favorite kinds of terminals for just “gettin’ er done”. Like the Energizer Bunny of data collection, the 2435 just keeps going, and going, and going. Here is a great place to buy new and refurbished 2435’s.

- David Wiegand

David Wiegand heads up the North American Pro Services team for Ryzex. He is proud to lead a team of professionals that is backed up by a nationwide network of resources to provide everything from Consulting, to Installation and Engineering. When not coordinating all things industrial/technical, you might run into him (not literally, hopefully!) on his road bike, or sailing.

Intermec annouced the order availability of the CK3 barcode handheld is ready for taking of orders and is stocked up for them to ship out in October.

Here’s part of the CK3 handheld press release:

“Intermec Inc. (NYSE:IN) today announced the CK3 mobile computer which delivers highly adaptable data and image capture capabilities, along with secure wireless communications, all in a highly durable handheld package.  The CK3 was specifically designed for warehouse operations and incorporates many capabilities never available before in one device”

We’ve taken a look at the device reviewed earlier on this blog and found it to really fit multiple verticals. While it’s bang on for the warehouse space, its weight and scan engine options seem to make it a worthy competitor also for retail applications. The Intermec CK3 will be a welcome addition to the Intermec barcode handheld family. We’re geared up and ready to offer demos to interested customers.

Site survey costs vary due to a number of circumstances and system requirements. Among these are: user count, facility size, bandwidth, speed, inventory contents, building construction, EMI presence, and other factors. On one hand, for example, a fairly open 40,000 ft2 warehouse full of lumber with only 10 RF users may take less than a day to survey and write a report. On the other hand, a 200,000 ft2 warehouse with low ceilings, walk-in sub-zero freezers, 50 users and 12 loading docks may take three days to survey and generate a report. As you can see, there are many factors to take into account to properly quote a price and perform a site survey for your facility.

Good afternoon all,

I recently had the opportunity to test out the “soon to be” released, Intermec CK3 unit. From what I heard around the horn, this unit would be replacing the CK30 and possibly even the CK31 series units. I, like many of you, have had one major concern with the CK series over the past two years and that is the battery life of the CK’s.

As many of you have heard from your customers, the CK31 just wouldn’t get a “full shift” out of its battery pack even when the unit was fully optimized. To many customers this was a major setback as they saw this as a waste of having to change out battery packs during an eight hour shift.

This being my primary concern, the first thing I wanted to know about the CK3 was will the battery pack make it through a full 8 hour shift. So I put the demo through a series of tests to find out.

The first test I performed was where I pretty much turned on every thing I possibly could on the CK3 demo and left all items running throughout the day while also performing over 500 scans. I had the backlight on, the radio constantly connected, programs going, etc. With everything “booming”, I was able to get 7 hours out of a fully charged battery pack…which in all honesty, is pretty dang good seeing that the unit was being used to its capacity.

The next day I performed a similar test but this time I optimized the unit a bit. I did keep the radio connected throughout the day and still performed over 500 scans. I only had the backlight on when the unit was being utilized and cut down on the number of programs being utilized. This being done, I was able to get 8.5 hours out of the battery pack before I left for the day. When I turned the unit off, it still had about 1/4 of battery life left as well.

To sum it all up, the CK3 will get a full shift (8 hours +) out of its battery pack which I think will relieve many of you. On a side note, I was also informed that Intermec will be offering an extended capacity battery pack as well and just to clarify, my testing was done with a standard battery pack.

You be the judge:

To request a CK3 demo model click here. Fill out your contact information and tell us what you think. You can also buy new and used barcode equipment here.

Adam Chitwood
Technical Support & Customer Service Supervisor – The Ryzex Group