Rimports is a company consistently moving products across the globe. With their fleet of products produced in China, and distributed throughout the United States and Canada, Rimports has become a major name in the fragrance retail market.
In dealing with high-quality scented wax and essential oils, wax warmer lamps and essential oil diffusers, Rimports has a wealth of different benchmarks to hit to execute quality assurance and maintain every part of their supply chain.
That’s why Rimports needs to have a system in place that can accommodate their workforce, their manufacturing center, and their distribution chain – while still creating a fast track for getting their products overseas twenty-four hours a day; seven days a week.
Customer Challenge
Before integrating MobileDemand into their manufacturing ecosystem, Rimports wasn't using any kind of tech at all – they were using clipboards. The clipboards were aided by short-range handheld scanners.
The scanners helped, but they wasted a lot of time. Drivers would have to get out of their fork trucks every single time just to scan one label – because the screens of the scanners were too small, and they wouldn't recognize product labels even a modest distance. This weighed heavily on efficiency.
The scanners also proved to be ineffective unless the user was completely stable and in a fixed position while using them. This meant that drivers would have to stop, and forklifts could not execute label checks while moving. This resulted in employees scanning as few labels as possible, which precluded Rimports’ ability to move inventory effectively, and problematic inventory slipped through the cracks.
They needed a mountable device that could scan barcodes at high speeds, at great distances, and aggregate all their data seamlessly for benchmark checks and revisions.
MobileDemand Solution
Rimports recently deployed a Microsoft Surface Pro with the MobileDemand rugged xCase mounted in a forklift. The enterprise-grade case provides industry leading protection which allows users to utilize the tablet without having to worry about device damage or downtime.
They are currently looking to set up all their other forklifts with this configuration plus a keyboard. This setup will empower employees to capture all necessary data with no little to no data error oversight – and capture data faster than ever before.
Results
Rimports found that the rugged Surface Pro tablets were quite robust in the manufacturing environment. The tablets were exposed to wax and fragrances in the air, as well as paper dust in the warehouse. They were also dropped frequently due to excessive use – and through everything, the Surface tablets were amazingly resilient.
Operators can now stay inside their forklifts and get information into the ERP system with no hassle, including barcode scanning using an external scanner. The brightly lit screens mean that employees can garner the information they need in a glance, and they can handle the tablets without any worry of damage or loss of information.
Now, with a much more reliable, rugged, and cost-effective system in place, Rimports is set to continue to scale the fragrance industry and become even more of a household name – all because they have taken control of their inventory processes and manufacturing environment on a higher level, through MobileDemand.