Zebra's Industry Solutions can give your business a competitive advantage by connecting people, assets and data to help you make better decisions.
Scale and energise your retail strategy with a digital backbone that unifies your team, informs priorities and drives results with Zebra's retail technology solutions.
Zebra's healthcare technology solutions provide patient identity management, mobile health devices, and business intelligence data to improve efficiency.
Zebra’s manufacturing technology solutions enable manufacturers to become more agile, optimise plant floor performance and embrace market changes.
Zebra's market-leading solutions and products improve customer satisfaction with a lower cost per interaction by keeping service representatives connected with colleagues, customers, management and the tools they use to satisfy customers across the supply chain.
In today's world, the demands on transportation and logistics companies are higher than ever. Dedicated Warehouse, Fleet and Delivery, and Yard and Terminal solutions enable visibility to every aspect of your business and keep operations running flawlessly around the clock.
Zebra's hospitality technology solutions equip your hotel and restaurant staff to deliver superior customer and guest service through inventory tracking and more.
Empower your field workers with purpose-driven mobile technology solutions to help them capture and share critical data in any environment.
Technology is a key enabler in helping the Public Sector provide their frontline and back office workers automate business process and assets with a digital voice.
Zebra’s mobile computing, scanning, and printing solutions connect each operational area in your warehouse to give you the agility to realize transformational gains.
Zebra's range of mobile computers equip your workforce with the devices they need from handhelds and tablets to wearables and vehicle-mounted computers.
Zebra's desktop, mobile, industrial, and portable printers for barcode labels, receipts, RFID tags and cards give you smarter ways to track and manage assets.
Zebra's 1D and 2D corded and cordless barcode scanners anticipate any scanning challenge in a variety of environments, whether retail, healthcare, T&L or manufacturing.
Zebra's extensive range of RAIN RFID readers, antennas, and printers give you consistent and accurate tracking.
Choose Zebra's reliable barcode, RFID and card supplies carefully selected to ensure high performance, print quality, durability and readability.
Zebra's location technologies provide real-time tracking for your organisation to better manage and optimise your critical assets and create more efficient workflows.
Zebra's rugged tablets and 2-in-1 laptops are thin and lightweight, yet rugged to work wherever you do on familiar and easy-to-use Windows or Android OS.
With Zebra's family of fixed industrial scanners and machine vision technologies, you can tailor your solutions to your environment and applications.
Zebra’s line of kiosks can meet any self-service or digital signage need, from checking prices and stock on an in-aisle store kiosk to fully-featured kiosks that can be deployed on the wall, counter, desktop or floor in a retail store, hotel, airport check-in gate, physician’s office, local government office and more.
Discover Zebra’s range of accessories from chargers, communication cables to cases to help you customise your mobile device for optimal efficiency.
Zebra's environmental sensors monitor temperature-sensitive products, offering data insights on environmental conditions across industry applications.
Keep labour costs low, your talent happy and your organisation compliant. Create an agile operation that can navigate unexpected schedule changes and customer demand to drive sales, satisfy customers and improve your bottom line.
Empower the front line with prioritised task notification and enhanced communication capabilities for easier collaboration and more efficient task execution.
Get full visibility of your inventory and automatically pinpoint leaks across all channels.
Reduce uncertainty when you anticipate market volatility. Predict, plan and stay agile to align inventory with shifting demand.
Drive down costs while driving up employee, security, and network performance with software designed to enhance Zebra's wireless infrastructure and mobile solutions.
Explore Zebra’s printer software to integrate, manage and monitor printers easily, maximizing IT resources and minimizing down time.
Make the most of every stage of your scanning journey from deployment to optimization. Zebra's barcode scanner software lets you keep devices current and adapt them to your business needs for a stronger ROI across the full lifecycle.
RFID development, demonstration and production software and utilities help you build and manage your RFID deployments more efficiently.
RFID development, demonstration and production software and utilities help you build and manage your RFID deployments more efficiently.
Zebra DNA is the industry’s broadest suite of enterprise software that delivers an ideal experience for all during the entire lifetime of every Zebra device.
Advance your digital transformation and execute your strategic plans with the help of the right location and tracking technology.
The Zebra Aurora suite of machine vision software enables users to solve their track-and-trace, vision inspection and industrial automation needs.
Zebra Aurora Focus brings a new level of simplicity to controlling enterprise-wide manufacturing and logistics automation solutions. With this powerful interface, it’s easy to set up, deploy and run Zebra’s Fixed Industrial Scanners and Machine Vision Smart Cameras, eliminating the need for different tools and reducing training and deployment time.
Aurora Imaging Library™, formerly Matrox Imaging Library, machine-vision software development kit (SDK) has a deep collection of tools for image capture, processing, analysis, annotation, display, and archiving. Code-level customization starts here.
Aurora Design Assistant™, formerly Matrox Design Assistant, integrated development environment (IDE) is a flowchart-based platform for building machine vision applications, with templates to speed up development and bring solutions online quicker.
Designed for experienced programmers proficient in vision applications, Aurora Vision Library provides the same sophisticated functionality as our Aurora Vision Studio software but presented in programming language.
Aurora Vision Studio, an image processing software for machine & computer vision engineers, allows quick creation, integration & monitoring of powerful OEM vision applications.
Adding innovative tech is critical to your success, but it can be complex and disruptive. Professional Services help you accelerate adoption, and maximise productivity without affecting your workflows, business processes and finances.
Zebra's Managed Service delivers worry-free device management to ensure ultimate uptime for your Zebra Mobile Computers and Printers via dedicated experts.
Find ways you can contact Zebra Technologies’ Support, including Email and Chat, ask a technical question or initiate a Repair Request.
Zebra's Circular Economy Program helps you manage today’s challenges and plan for tomorrow with smart solutions that are good for your budget and the environment.
Technology and logistics are moving at a phenomenal pace, yet the work culture at many warehouses is still stuck in the past. Compared to the modern-day office and spotlight on well-being, some warehouses are archaically depressing. Granted, they are industrial hubs and not creative ad agencies, but that doesn’t mean welcoming, stimulating environments should be curbed. The warehouse team is responsible for shifting items from A to B on behalf of global brands, so it’s important they are looked after just as much as the office-based departments at logistical giants and online retailers. That next-day delivery the customer has been promised is partly in the hands of the warehouse employee scanning, swiping and screen tapping for hours on end.
If you’ve not spent time inside, most warehouses are giant hangars that can be freezing cold, boiling hot, noisy and dim, with too much artificial lighting and barely any home comforts. Workers clock on, do their jobs, then clock off, and there can be a significant amount of employee churn. Warehouses need to find a way to foster greater team spirit, collaboration and loyalty. A more comfortable, enjoyable and flexible environment might nudge employees to bond and perform to the best of their ability.
The warehouse floor is busy, and not the place for oversize beanbags, inspiration walls and an Xbox. But what stops these being available elsewhere in the vicinity, giving employees a place to chill out and socialise when on breaks? Warehouse managers could learn a lot from Google or Sky with free or subsidised canteens, clean bright meeting areas, airy spaces and gym facilities. What if warehouses offered free breakfast snacks and fresh coffee pre-shift? I’d say workers would show up in good time, feel valued and perhaps even start their shift earlier, knowing they are receiving perks in return. A decent pre-shift meal could work wonders for all.
When it comes to technology, some warehouses are not keeping up with the times. The next generation of workers who have grown up in a fast-paced digital world will be expecting touch screens, apps, intuitive interfaces and smart devices. If the warehouse technology is slow, unreliable or outdated, they will become despondent and eventually leave, resulting in high staff turnover.
You might question why we should bother investing in warehouse workers…who cares if there is a high turnover of staff? There isn’t really a shortage of labour, right?
Well, for those of us designing and producing high-spec technological devices, these end users are key to our success. Technology is only as good as the people operating it. So even the best device in the world isn’t going to perform if the user has no respect for it, neglects it, fails to report problems, or resorts to cutting corners and manual methods like pen and paper. A dimension measuring device, for example, is expertly designed to calculate remaining volume in a container or vehicle, and someone in some tech enterprise (you perhaps?) has invested significant money, time, research, testing, marketing and sales in getting this product perfected. If the operator doesn’t interpret the data or commands properly, either through apathy or ignorance, then shipping can be delayed, money will be wasted and the product will likely be deemed a failure. A total waste of everyone’s investment.
These end users also provide invaluable insight into the true user experience. Without taking the time to listen to their feedback and ideas, how can you improve the design? It could be something as simple yet unforeseen as a touchscreen that doesn’t work with gloves, a screen that is hard to read with goggles on, an alert that isn’t loud enough due to ear protection worn, or a process that is excessively laborious resulting in short cuts. If, as employees, they feel valued, warehouse workers are surely more likely to offer proactive feedback or report a fault. Whilst product training can help, improving morale nurtures a positive attitude, boosted in part by a welcoming workplace.
So how could you/we motivate warehouse workers more?
Setting targets is one option, but this doesn’t necessarily build teamwork, assure quality or create a conscientious attitude. Inter-warehouse competitions have worked well in my experience, giving individuals goals to work for and reaping rewards as a team. Therefore, a ‘dangling a carrot’ is preferable to threatening with a stick, so to speak.
Some of the benefits that office workers enjoy actually cost very little to the employer but really lift morale, increase productivity, and reduce lethargy, absenteeism and sickness. What about a complimentary coffee bar, an on-site yoga class or visiting physio/chiropractor? All that physical work in the warehouse can take its toll, and these holistic therapies could help prevent injury or sickness.
With the right investment, the modernised warehouse could become a powerhouse!
What sort of unconventional perks would you consider offering to warehouse employees? Tell us at blog@zebra.com or on social media.
Mark Jolley leads the RFID Solutions Sales team for Zebra technologies in EMEA. This team utilizes Zebra's next-generation solutions to improve productivity through innovation and thought leadership, with a large emphasis on real-time data analytics and best practices. The team focuses on active and passive RFID technologies, including UWB, BLE and UHF products, which allows a customer to select the right technology for its use case. Prior to this, Mark worked across many of the large post and parcel companies to transform organizations with the implementation of new mobile Zebra technology.
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