.KEYWORD science
.FLYINGHEAD PALM IN THE REAL WORLD
.TITLE Where no handheld has gone before
.FEATURE
.SPOTLIGHT FIGALT cover.gif
.SUMMARY By virtue of their design, Palm handhelds have been approved to enter industries where no handheld has gone before. In recent months, Palm technology has voyaged into two new and exciting environments. Steve Niles will show you how Palm handhelds are being used in both petro-chemical industrial facilities and outer space.
.AUTHOR Steve Niles
By virtue of their design, Palm handhelds have been approved to enter industries where no handheld has gone before. In recent months, Palm handhelds gained approval to voyage into two new and exciting environments. These devices can now be found not only in petro-chemical industrial facilities, but also in outer space.
.H1 Hot topic
In the May 2002 issue of PalmPower’s Enterprise Edition, we learned how LinCo Services, Inc., a coffee services distributor, migrated its route delivery business away from paper-intensive processes by deploying the MiniMate handheld solution for route delivery on wireless Palm handhelds.
Here again we’re going to see how Palm handhelds can be used to automatically generate a driver’s delivery route and optimize the order of deliveries, minimizing the distance traveled by each delivery truck. However, in this case, the company is LPG Central (at http://www.lpgcentral.com), which sells a route-optimization solution to commercial and industrial oil, gas, and propane distributors. This helps to insure that the most volatile thing LinCo drivers have to encounter on a given route is a particularly strong cup of coffee. Drivers in the petro-chemical industry, on the other hand, are taking their Palm handhelds into potentially explosive environments.
They don’t have to worry though. Recently, the Palm m500 and m505 handheld computers were the first handheld computers to be certified as free from any possibility of igniting flammables that may be present in petro-chemical environments. The two Palm handheld models, which were certified by Underwriter Laboratory, will be labeled with an electrical-classification rating for Class 1, Division II Groups A, B, C, D environments, which include most refineries, chemical plants, and other industrial facilities.
LPG Central sells a route-optimization solution to commercial and industrial oil, gas, and propane distributors. LPG’s customers use Palm handhelds and LPG Central’s custom SmartFill software to generate the driver’s delivery route and optimize the order of deliveries. Now, with the classification of the Palm m500 and m505 handhelds, LPG’s software solutions can be run on a mobile platform that’s not only proven to streamline operations, reduce paperwork, and improve efficiencies, but also offers the highest level of safety. LPG is free to expand its mobile solutions into those environments where they previously could not due to the possible presence of flammables.
.H2 How the LPG Central solution works
Drivers record delivery information on Palm handhelds and generate invoices onsite using a Monarch printer. Delivery and invoice information can be downloaded from the Palm handheld to the office computer via a HotSync operation at the end of each day. Before the handheld solution, customers of LPG Central had to generate invoices from handwritten logs, which then were mailed from the main office.
When compared to the paper-based process, the Palm handheld-based process speeds cash flow, reduces clerical mistakes, and eliminates data-entry labor costs. Palm also reports that the use of handhelds has cut operational costs for LPG Central’s customers by an average of 20 to 30 percent. With the cost of delivery trucks averaging $2 to $4 per mile, LPG Central’s route optimization is generating a large part of this savings.
LPG Central plans to update its handheld solution so that data can be sent wirelessly from Palm handhelds to the office throughout the day as deliveries are made. The company is also working on a handheld application for field service calls that optimizes service routes and allows technicians to perform onsite billing.
.H1 The final frontier
The frontiers Palm handhelds have been certified to venture into goes even further. On April 26 a Russian Soyuz rocket carried South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, the first African in space, to the International Space Station. [Can I tell you how amused I am that a guy named Shuttleworth took a space shuttle to the International Space Station?–DG]
While this is a historic event in itself, what made it even more exciting, at least to this audience, is that Shuttleworth carried with him a Palm m125 handheld–the only handheld computer to be approved for space travel on the Soyuz. Shuttleworth is pictured in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth became the first African in space.
During his stay on the space station, Mark’s activities needed to be scheduled down to the minute. To ensure this came off without a hitch, a special scheduling application was needed to meet the unique requirements of the project. To create a customized Date Book application that could be programmed on a minute-by-minute basis, Palm South Africa worked with the "First African in Space Project" coordinators and a South African Palm OS developer company called Rafale.
All the communication between Earth and the International Space Station is managed by Tsup (Moscow Mission Control). The application Rafale designed allowed Tsup to update Mark’s activity schedule in an Access Database and send it to Mark via email. On receipt of the email, Mark saved the updated information to his Palm Desktop software on his laptop and then synchronized it to his Palm m125 handheld. In a matter of seconds, Mark had a mobile activity schedule on his handheld, which meant he didn’t need to keep going back to his laptop to check his schedule.
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For the duration of Mark’s mission, Palm handheld users were able to download Mark’s daily activity schedule at the Palm South Africa Web site (at http://www.palmusergroup.co.za) as well as at the First African in Space Web site (at http://www.africaninspace.co.za).
These two examples demonstrate the ever-increasing usefulness of Palm handhelds. More and more enterprises are finding the technology to be invaluable, on this planet and beyond.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on LPG Central, visit http://www.lpgcentral.com.
For more information on Palm South Africa, visit http://www.palmusergroup.co.za.
For more information on the First African in Space Project, visit http://www.africaninspace.co.za.
For more information on Palm handhelds, visit http://www.palm.com.
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.BIO
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