How Honeywell Operational Intelligence Is Helping Distributions Centers

Effective mobile asset management is mission critical for an organization, ensuring they get the most out of each and every device.  Beginning with requisition and procurement, followed by the deployment, then maintenance through to its retirement, operational asset management is a critical process.

Defining the problem

Effective processes provide control, consistency and accuracy that benchmark against specific goals and objectives.  Per industry experts, when an organization chooses to onboard well-defined and standardized operational asset management strategy, they will see as much as a 55% cost savings (e.g. 30% in the first year followed by 5 percent in each of the subsequent five years.) 

It’s the difference between being able to know vs. only being able to guess about the operational lifecycle of their mobile device fleet.  When it comes to your mobile assets - what you don’t know can cost you. Consider questions such as the following for your mobile devices.

1. Where are they in the operational lifecycle? 

• Are they in use? 
• Are they lost in the RMA workflow?

2. Are they being utilized efficiently?

• Do you have too many assets or too few assets at a specific location?

3. Are they being repaired effectively?

• Are your repair SLAs being met?
• Are specific devices having repeat repairs?
• What is your No Fault Found return rate?

Which of the questions could you respond to with 100% confidence?  What difference would it make if you could answer these questions? Honeywell and industry research show that it is not uncommon for a company to have 10-30% of their devices either stolen or missing.  Think about that.  If you had 1,000 devices in your fleet, as much as 300 of them are gone.  Ouch! That is a very expensive proposition when you think of the cost of just one mobile asset. 
That is a tremendous challenge of underutilized, unavailable or mismanaged mobile assets which brings great opportunities of where Honeywell can help.

Defining Your Process

What is your process? Is your process based a spreadsheet or operational asset management software or some combination there off?

What keeps your process from allowing you to answer the above questions for every mobile device in your fleet? How does your process stack up against industry best practices?

Remember, life cycle is what you do, asset tracking records what you have done.  Process is how you do it. Process is the foundation of asset management.

At Honeywell we know a little bit about operational asset lifecycle, especially when we talk about RMA (Return Manufacture Authorization). We literally will have millions of mobile devices that we use and support in almost every industry under every possible condition. Knowing the disposition of every device can make the difference of whether you have successful outcomes in every workplace, every shift, every work workflow, and every worker.  

Are we trying to make the problem bigger than it is? No. As you requisition and deploy your mobile device fleet, you will find them in DCs, retail spaces, and delivery verticals. They break, things go wrong with them. How do you manage the workflow in the return process around those devices from a service provider to and from a repair center? Many companies do not centralize their device management across manufactures. Most simply use spreadsheet which don’t give you accountability, easy reporting, centralized management of devices.

Our customers continually share real-world experiences about the loss of worker productivity due to device issues related to battery performance, being lost in manufacture RMA voids, any number of hundred reasons. We are taking about millions of dollars.

Defining the Solution

At Honeywell, we have the solution, driven by our worldwide ecosystem that includes our experience, our customers’ experience and our partners’ experience.  Leverage that, we are introducing Honeywell Operational Intelligence, an operational asset management solution that focuses on mobile device operational lifecycle with special attention to the process.

Operational Intelligence is focused on the mobile device service center - driving service center excellence for managing the operational lifecycle of a fleet of mobility devices and giving visibility across the RMA workflow to the customer and into the repair center.

Operational Intelligence from Honeywell is a manufacture-agnostic operational asset lifecycle (meaning it can manage both Honeywell and non-Honeywell hardware) and analytics solution for RMA (Return Manufacture Authorization) that systematically tracks, manages and optimizes all your IT assets, across all your locations, throughout the lifecycle. 

Operational Intelligence delivers an intelligent, real-time, web-based platform to reduce costs, streamline processes and increase visibility resulting in improved profitability.  It also produces a competitive edge by driving operational process improvements and smart decisions by enforcing governance and processes for your equipment and provides the analytics to make smart decisions resulting in improved profitability through the following benefits:

• Reduce wasteful “No Fault Found” returns
• Right-size your spare pool inventory
• Right-place your assets
• Consolidate RMA processes into one efficient system
• Verify adherence to RMA vendor contracts

With Operational Intelligence, you can confidently answer questions like

• Are your sites or device types experiencing high returns?
• What are your No Fault Found returns metrics?
• Where are your devices right now? Are they where they should be?
• Are your devices ready for use? Do you have enough or too many devices?
• Are you getting the services guarantees you are paying for from providers? 
• Will you be experiencing battery issues during shifts?
• What batteries should you replace and when?

Minimizing the loss of mobile assets through the life cycle

With Operational Intelligence, you can minimize the loss of mobile assets by:

• Assigning assets to unique departments and locations for accountability
• Identifying current or last known location for each asset
• Receiving real-time status updates on assets returned for repair

Tracking is not limited to just a physical location. When a device enters the RMA lifecycle, you receive real-time updates at every step in the process from the service center to repair center and when it will return to you. 

Managing asset security, contracts, and usage through the life cycle

It is not uncommon for a fleet of mobile devices to include assets from multiple manufactures.  Each device comes with its own OS/software, contracts, and agreements that must be carefully managed. Operational Intelligence helps you 

• Track vendor contracts and verify adherence to SLAs (Service Level Agreement)
• Verify adherence to RMA vendor contracts 
• Manage lease agreements and renewals for financing terms 
• Monitor usage, utilization and software versions
• Manage mobile device cyber security risks

Standardize, automate, and simplify processes through the life cycle  

With Operational Intelligence, you can also create accountability to reduce unnecessarily returns by standardizing the process. You are able to:

• Define self-service checklists
• Consolidate RMA processes into one efficient system
• Control corporate shipping methods 

Optimize asset performance and usage through the operational life cycle 

With Operational Intelligence, you can build a better a business and optimize your business results through being able to 

• Right-size your spare pool inventory
• Right-place your assets
• Predictive device analytics

Operational Intelligence development roadmap is robust and exciting 

As we build out Operation Intelligence, these are the areas we will be focusing on for upcoming releases such as network diagnostics, service costs, battery analytics, lifecycle analytics, smart alerts and notifications, smart replenishment, enable service creation, security and compliance, worker score / behavior, device health score, workflow time studies, artificial-intelligence (AI)- based configuration optimization

Where do you go from here?

Operation Intelligence is the solution for your device Service Center operations—manage your operational asset lifecycle for the workflow and analytics around RMA (Return Manufacture Authorization). Systematically track, manage and optimize all your IT assets, across all your locations, throughout the operational asset lifecycle. Operational Intelligence delivers results that have been previously unattainable:

• Reduce missing hardware knowing the location of your mobile devices
• Decrease unnecessary returns through a 25 percent reduction in no fault found returns
• Improve profitability through reducing your RMAs by 50 percent

For more information about how Honeywell Operational Intelligence can make a difference in your organization, contact your Honeywell account representative.

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