Our client is a small package delivery company that employs more than fifty employees and provide package delivery services via eight hubs in five states. The client specializes in time-sensitive packages for medical and optical labs. Its customer base is requiring higher levels of service, most notably, the ability to track packages via a web-based portal similar to large package delivery services like FedEx and UPS.

Ideally, the client wants to create and scan barcodes, capture signatures, and communicate through its existing T-Mobile APN wireless network or potentially another carrier back end to the website providing their customers visibility of the service they provide.  This will allow improved service for its customers and provide operational improvements resulting in measurable cost savings.

RACO Industries wireless team customized the core application of the Z-Space ITScriptNet Mobile Application Development Tool to create a complete mobile package delivery solution for the client’s mobile workforce. This improved the efficiencies of the routes and provided real-time information to the home office, hubs and its customers.  We also designed and built a customized web-based package tracking portal for the routing/delivery data and to give a user-friendly view for its customers. Although the solution is not as sophisticated as the big boys’, the solution does give the client everything it needs to exceed its current customer base’s expectations and create the ability to acquire new business from its competition.  

The hardware utilized in this solution include: Motorola MC70 Enterprise Digital Assistant (EDA) and Zebra QL220 receipt printer. The Motorola MC70 is a rugged handheld mobile device that incorporates a mobile phone, PDA, computer, scanner and imager in a single unit designed for the rigors of all-day, everyday usage. This compact, lightweight device combines multi-mode wireless networking, voice and data communications, and advanced data capture in an enterprise productivity tool that can support nearly any application in any environment. Coupled with the Zebra QL220 durable and lightweight printer, the solution provides the client’s mobile workforce with the optimal bundle for its requirements.  GPS technology can also be added to provide accurate, real time location data to the back end.  

For more information on the package delivery solution or other mobile worker solutions, contact RACO Industries.

The question on everyone’s minds these days is how we can protect ourselves from tainted food.  The simple answer is to ensure that every food processor has in place a proper traceability system to allow it to track finished products back through their ingredients.  In 2002, Congress passed the Bioterrorism Act that mandated that food processors provide the FDA with the source of ingredients and the customer that the finished products were sold to.

However, without an automated system, it is very difficult and time consuming for a processor to figure out where all finished products were sold to that contain any specific ingredient lot/serial number.  One example of an automated Lot Tracking system is TWLot™ from ToolWorx Information Products, a RACO ISV Partner.

TWLot™ provides the Parent/Child genealogy that enables processors to quickly contain the scope of a product recall.  The system uses bar codes and RFID tags to capture ingredient lots as they are mixed in with batches and individual items.  The end result is that TWLot™ can tell a food processor what “gozinta” what.  This is illustrated as follows:

Once all the data is captured and stored, TWLot™ provides reporting tools to easily “drill down” from finished product to ingredient and back up the chain again (“where used”) to identify any possible tainted shipment as well as quarantine any bad product not yet shipped.

Protecting our food supply is critical.  TWLot™ is the perfect tool to ensure that no child has to worry about their Peanut Butter and Jelly lunches.

There’s so many factors that you need to juggle in order to run a successful business.  Between all the exterior pressures like the economy and your competition, it’s easy to overlook those people in your own building.  But workers are something that the folks here at RACO take pride in focusing on.  Management journal SmartBusiness recently featured RACO Industries President Ted Kolp in an article about developing leaders and employee relations.

“Just showing appreciation is something that I make myself do every day. It can take up to an hour to do that, but it’s an investment in my time that I think is well worth it because you build trust, you build candor, you gather ideas, (employees) take ownership.” 

It’s a mindset that all of the management here shares and has led to RACO being named one of the Top 10 best employers in the state by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce for the second year in a row.