Honeywell Provides Transportation and Logistics Unique and Tailored Solutions to Help Keep Workers Safer

Barry J. Ewell

August 3, 2020

Transportation and Logistic (T&L) workers have been on the front line throughout the health crisis. Changes in the way workers do their responsibilities and interact with customers have changed overnight. Gartner reports¹that during these extraordinary times, there are many safety concerns related to the supply chain workforce. Some of the challenges included

Hours of service (HOS) requirements have been waived for delivery of emergency supplies, supply chain leaders are focusing on using or implementing technology to help monitor the safety of their drivers.
Social distancing practices and quarantine measures are affecting the way drivers, warehouse employees and end-customer employees are executing their jobs.
The closing of many businesses and public places, as well as changes to business hours, have created a new hyper focus on flexibility and nimbleness for businesses.
The increase in demand for certain products and the limited flow of supply have created impacts on product safety through theft and the introduction of counterfeit products in the supply chain.

Companies and analysts in T&L agree that 2020 and beyond will be very difficult to predict just how the industry will evolve.² At Honeywell, we have been working closely with our T&L customers throughout this period of time to identify critical areas and workflows where we can use our global expertise to help customers define and rollout solutions that will address their immediate worker and long-term business needs. We recognize that all players will require very specific and tailor-made solutions.

The most immediate changes that companies are focused on have been the health and safety practices of employees and exchanges of goods between shippers, carriers, receivers, and customers. For example,²

Commercial drivers in many fleets are of a higher age than other professions and many have preexisting conditions. Carriers are aware of this issue and have been taking extra precautions from providing personal protective equipment (e.g. masks and gloves) to moving to a contactless delivery protocol.
Some pickup and delivery locations are proactively checking driver temperatures before being allowed on site.Other locations have asked the drivers to stay in the cab while in-house employees empty and/or fill trailers.
A signature at the door has been replaced with a combination of options such as having the³
- Last mile providers use connectivity applications allowing customers to request deliveries be left at their door and be alerted by SMS or push notification.
- Courier take a photo of the delivery at the customers doorstep and then email it along with the delivery notice.
- Delivery driver drop the parcel at the doorstep, ring the doorbell, and then ask the customer to confirm their name from a safe distance.
- Customers choose to pick-up deliveries at parcel lockers that can be open with smart phone app which limits contact with other people.

Honeywell Transportation and Logistics Solutions

Honeywell understands the shifting demands of the T&L operation. In response, we have launched a comprehensive effort to quickly develop solutions that address our customer needs with device and software innovation, applying technology advances in new ways and leveraging our global partner network.

These solutions will help to address social distancing and new cleaning procedures, while maintaining a focus on employees’ productivity – without compromising accuracy and speed. Our commitment is to work with you within your operations to help you operate within the ‘new normal’. These solutions include:

Software to Address Health and Safety of the Workforce. Honeywell has expanded the feature set of Operational Intelligence with ability to support the needs of mobile workforce.

Operational Intelligence software is a remote asset management platform that helps DCs keep their mobile-equipped employees productive, while helping them respond to local site health and safety compliance requirements. New health crisis response features give employees control to act quickly, increasing productivity and decreasing device downtime, while reducing frequency of contact or touch. The features include:

Social Distancing Proximity Detection allows organizations to prioritize and monitor social distancing practices. The feature monitors the proximity between Honeywell devices and logs alerts, allowing frontline workers to promote social distancing and adherence to safety guidelines.
Check Out/In assigns unique devices or assets to a specific user, creating a chain of custody that provides managers device tracing data. This will provide real time visibility to each device’s location throughout the DC, thereby eliminating the additional costs and hassle of ‘devices that go missing’.
Device Cleaning Management gives you the ability to set-up configurable cleaning protocols for each asset. Configurations can be per employee on an hourly, daily or in-between shift basis. Each cleaning event will be logged with the user, time and date for reporting. In addition, the feature can also send alerts to clean other assets and areas of the worksite.
Remote Control and Remote Wipe give IT administrators the availability to quickly take control of a device in any location to investigate and fix issues remotely and digitally wipe devices to original factory settings, allowing IT professionals to maintain social distances.

Honeywell Smart Talk for T&L Communications. Honeywell Smart Talk is a true voice-enabled unified workforce communications application for Transportation & Logistics environment that tackles the problem of fragmented communications. You receive enterprise-grade security for voice calling, text and media messaging, and user presence. Smart Talk can be added to Honeywell CT60 Mobile Computer or to most types of mobile devices workers already carry. Device-enabled employees are always connected and able to access critical information from company headquarters and operational dispatch while out on the road making deliveries. This minimizes contact as they continue to maintain social distancing, while keeping their focus on meeting logistics needs

You enable smarter communications for the entire team from a single mobile device. One device to manage and maintain. One device replacing the need to support and buy consumer mobile phones.

Honeywell General-purpose Devices with Disinfectant-ready Housing. Honeywell is introducing a broad range of its most popular scanners, mobile computers, and printers with disinfectant-ready housings (DRHs) for general-purpose applications.

This is the same DRHs that Honeywell designed to withstand the regular cleaning protocol required to address the infection and disease control needs of the healthcare industry. Disinfectant-ready housings have been proven to be durable in more than a decade of use in the healthcare industry.

These devices can be used throughout the warehousing, logistics and retail fields with the same ease of use as standard Honeywell products but can promote a healthier work environment for employees and customers. For more information see: Honeywell Announces Complete Line of General-purpose Devices with Disinfectant-ready Housing

Honeywell CT60 Mobile Computer. Honeywell has seen rapid adoption of contactless proof of deliveries. This new workflow has been adopted by many courier and logistics companies. Honeywell CT60 Mobile Computers are designed for delivery drivers that require real-time connectivity to business-critical applications. At every doorstep/location, the CT60 mobile computer enables the driver to scan the items and verify delivery with photos or SMS which can be sent to the customer as proof-of-delivery. The CT60’s sound recorder application can also capture the customer’s voice as a signature instead of requiring them to touch the device, resulting in a contactless delivery. The CT60 scan engine reads barcodes that are damaged or poorly printed at non-traditional fulfilment centers with ease, ensuring that packages that would not have been delivered reach their destination.

The CT60 has an IP67 rating and is able to withstand the rigors of T&L applications. Drivers need devices that can withstand the demands of working conditions such as drops, tumbles and vibrations. The CT60 can scan barcodes up to 30 feet (10 meters) and capture images through the 13MP camera capability.

The CT60 is part of the Honeywell Mobility Edge family of devices that offers an integrated, repeatable, scalable approach to workflow automation that is based on a common hardware and software platform. Designed for Android, it delivers a unified platform that all software solutions are based on. Businesses can develop and deploy faster while reducing development costs. Honeywell is deeply committed to the longevity and quality of the Mobility Edge platform. Honeywell ruggedized devices on the Android Mobility Edge platform offers the longest lifecycle in the industry with support through seven Android releases.. The following products are built on the Mobility Edge platform: Honeywell CT40, CT60, CN80, CK65, and Thor™ VM1A, and VM3A.

Manage Honeywell Enterprise Mobility. Honeywell Enterprise Mobility Services offers a comprehensive set of solutions that addresses every phase of the mobility lifecycle – from device selection to security concerns – while enabling your employees to work from any device at anytime, anywhere in the world. The Honeywell Enterprise Mobility Services are designed to improve operational efficiencies within the DC through managing spare pools including the repair and commissioning of devices, improving asset management and providing multi-tier support for the applications within the DC.

Honeywell Edge Services. Honeywell Edge Services provides the DC with a variety of solutions that support your devices throughout the life of your devices. With Honeywell Edge Services, you get a full-service solution or the ability to customize a solution that fits your exact requirements. Our offering also gives you the confidence of having leading-class technologies combined with service and support plans that are designed to keep you operational for longer. In fact,

extending device lifecycle from 5 to 7 years reduces the total cost of ownership by over 50% by reducing training, deployment and acquisition costs⁴.

Honeywell Offers A Full lineup of Transportation and Logistics Solutions. Honeywell’s transportation and Logistics solutions are utilized by organizations and facilities worldwide. Our innovative solutions allow for faster, smarter and more effective work to be done throughout the supply chain and specifically within T&L. The solutions are simple to integrate with existing IT infrastructure, shortening ramp-up times and getting critical technology in place to meet today’s demand. Honeywell offers a full lineup of T&L solutions, including mobile computers, printers, scanners and software.

For more information, visit Honeywell Transportation and Logistics Solutions or Contact Honeywell Solutions Experts today! Call 1-800-934-3163.

Consult these articles for more information.

¹Gartner. How to Use Technology to Improve Safety in Transportation During Disruption Like COVID-19 and Beyond. Carly West and Bart De Muynck. Published 30 April 2020.

²How the Coronavirus Pandemic Might Reshape Trucking’s Future

³ Solidarity in the last mile in the face of COVID-19

⁴ Source: Honeywell Internal Research.

Barry J. Ewell

SPS BLOG EDITOR

Barry J. Ewell is a Senior Content Marketing Communications Specialist for Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions. He has been researching and writing on supply chain topics since 1991.