[geeks] Warehouse Handhelds

[Brooke Gravitt]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 12:57 PM, Mark Benson <md.benson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dunno if you guys have any experience of warehouse handheld systems,
> here's my situation:
>
> We have a small stores and need stock control. We need to be able to
> check in and out stock and also stocktake the stores without being
> tethered to a PC. We have no bar codes, and implementing that would be
> impractical at this stage (our suppliers don't even use them).
>
> I was looking at toughened handhelds running WinCE. I don't like having
> a WLAN in the building for security reasons so I'd like some way of
> logging transactions on the handheld then dumping that top a PC via the
> cradle.
>
> Buying a solution in is beyond our means, so our usual policy applies.
> Buy the hardware and write the software. Problem is I've never developed
> proper software, let alone for WinCE...
>
> Any alternative (apart from paper)?
>

I have ( bizarrely) some experience in this area, as I owned a retail store
where we used metrologic scanners to do inventory and as I work at the
technology arm of Macy's. I'm not involved directly in POS, but I know we
use a couple of different types of scanners between the stores and the
distribution centers/warehouses and they're all wireless. We're in an odd
situation as we also "in-source" the RMA work on many of these, as well as
drive design decisions for the vendors due to the amount of scanners in the
field and their usage. We have developed our own POS system and have a
customized COTS product for whse mgmt. For my retail store, I used Sixth
Sense POS for both inventory and cash register. It used a 4D database and
the reporting was atrocious.

I can give you some additional details ( if you like ) off-list.

Brooke