In the ever-changing world, chemical industry has been facing many challenges. They are in continuous pressure to increase their productivity and hence enhance their profit margin.
Mobility for Chemical Industry
One of the main challenges is fulfilling customer expectations are increasing day-by-day. Customers have mobile devices with them and expect rapid responses on all kinds of business matters. As a business user, they have to respond to their customers from any location at any time. For example, if a sales executive visiting on customer’s site will be asked to provide immediate information on order status, product availability, etc. In such cases, sales executive needs mobile devices to call the office to find out order status or need mobile applications to access data immediately.
The chemical industry has started to accept mobility solutions in order to stay competitive in the market. The industry has now started looking the mobility as their main part of their business. Mobile technology plays a big role in the chemical industry. Mobility solutions have changed the working environment of the chemical companies. It has improved working style of the entire supply chain, procurement, and sales department. By using the mobile technologies, organizations have become more productive by providing access to real time data to their sales staffs. This improves connection with supplier and sellers, and improves efficiency of employees working in the organization.
Mobile solutions were integrated with business processes to speed up their way of operating in the industry. This helped enterprises to develop efficient and adaptive supply chain. Chemical industry implemented mobile solutions in areas like enterprise management, sales management, asset management, supply chain management, manufacturing management, emergency management, and field-personnel mobility management in order to drive maximum benefits from mobility solutions. Mobile technologies can be used to keep a man, machinery, and material connected in the business process. For instance, the business manager should be informed about the criticality of business when he is on a business trip or out of station for personal work. The employees can provide him necessary business data on devices like cell phones, laptops, or PDA, which he would be carrying with him.
Why Mobility Matters
In a recent survey, respondents were asked to identify the technology, which they believe will have the greatest positive effect on the businesses. Comparison was made between mobile technology, business intelligence, cloud computing, and social media. Respondents gave high ratings to mobile technology. Mobile technology stood first for bringing a positive impact on businesses over the next five years. They also said, in the coming future their companies will invest heavily in the mobile technology implementation in their enterprise. The demand of bar-code scanner, mobile devices, and the company provided Smartphones would continue to increase in the years to come in the chemical industry.
Mobility in Emergency
Emergency response can be critically improved by implementing the mobility technologies. Emergency response team on the field can coordinate at the right time if they carry mobile or portable devices with them.
The sales team cannot access their company’s network to access information when they are traveling or out of the company. The mobility solutions are available for sales management will help sales executive to access customer information, product descriptions, product availability details, product complaints, emails, product price data, payable modes, payable status etc. from any locations and at any time. These applications also improve pre-sales and post sales experience and availability of data, which result in better customer interaction. Sales executives can easily track and view their sales orders for various customers and speed up the sales activities by accessing information on the spot.
Mobility in asset management
Asset management can be improved in multiple ways. Using mobile applications, you can access data or enter data from anywhere and speed up the processes. These applications improve asset management for chemical units by utilizing RFID (radio frequency identification) tags on machines, equipment, and spare parts. The machine information can be updated with installation and servicing dates which results in efficient resource utilization. The equipment can be identified and their exact location can be tracked. The performance of maintenance technicians can be improved by providing them mobile devices so that on a field trip, they can record asset performance data like abnormal sound, motor temperature etc.
Mobility in supply chain management (Chemical Processing Center)
Supply chain management is one major area of the chemical industry, which involves a number of processes. The chemical industry can implement mobility solutions for several supply chain processes, which includes inbound and outbound logistics, inventory management, warehouse management, distribution etc. In the warehouse management industry, mobile applications provide access to information at the point of work, which allows companies to deploy the right resource at the right location. Using mobile applications, workers can easily access product information or storage locations as well as keep an eye on warehouse operations. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) provides a good chance to transform the supply chain. RFID tags can put on containers, bags, and packages, which can be easily tracked during movement, receipt, and dispatch.
Mobility in communication &collaboration (Chemical Processing Center)
Communication, which is done through mobile devices like smartphone or scanners, gives quick updates on delivery status and conditions of product. Unexpected events can be handled through mobility solutions. There are mobile applications, which determine substance conditions during transit, such as temperature, humidity and others. Team members can work in groups and communicate quickly with each other. They can access any information or document from anywhere and at any time.
Implementing mobile solutions in the chemical industry will provide following advantages to the enterprises
- Rapidly improves the business processes of the organizations
- Reduce cost of chemical industry
- Improve customer services and increase customer satisfaction by providing quick responses
- Increases productivity and efficiency of chemical industry
- Increases use of business applications in the chemical industry
- Provides a safe working environment for the office staff and the field staff
- Improves profit margin of the industry
- You can easily integrate mobile applications with existing systems
- Reduced logistics costs and optimized inventory levels
- Real time data access for effective decision-making
- Save the time and money of the enterprise. Convert downtime into productive time and plays a major role in accessing organizational data and that helps them in decision-making
- Managers can approve travel and vacation request, timesheet, and expense reports of employees through mobile devices.
- Employees can apply for leaves, travel expenses, and submit timesheets with the help of mobile devices.
- Using mobile devices, production managers can monitor the production schedules and order management.
- You can quickly launch new products, train new employees, and integrate new customers, partners, and suppliers.
Conclusion:
However, mobile technology brings positive change in the chemical industry, but it is completely dependent on the selection of proper technology. One should have a clear idea about the business requirements and needs before implementing mobility solutions. There are multiple mobile applications available in the market, but choice of applications depends on the business requirements. The adoption of these mobile technologies bring benefits like collaboration, critical data availability, Assets tracking, business faster response, business users, improved business applications and right decision at the right time.
