Emery Scan & Load Prototype

Situation

Emery Worldwide considered replacing their existing delivery terminals with pen-based terminals. The pen-based devices included more processing power and would provide a more intuitive user interface.

Company

Telxon Corporation (Seattle, WA) for Emery Worldwide (Portland, OR)

Action(s)

We worked closely with Emery IT, drivers, and management to create various prototypes for the Scan & Load operations. The prototypes used both local LAN radios when the driver was in the depot and WAN radios when in the field.

Outcome

The applications were well received by the drivers and the depot supervisors. The project was plagued by hardware problems. These first generation pen-based devices had interference and reliability problems with the radios. Emery also failed to estimate the costs of moving such massive amounts of data via WAN. The prototype software worked well but the hardware limitations and the infrastructure costs prevented the system from being deployed.

Benefits

• Real time package tracking for pickup and delivery
• Complete wireless connectivity
• Intuitive pen-based user interface for the driver and customers

Product Details

• Telxon 1134 Pen-Based Computer (MS-DOS)
• PenRight! development environment (C++)
• Greenleaf COMM++ libraries
• 2.4 GHz wireless (local) and a WAN radio (remote)