3M Manages Diverse Network of Mobile Devices with Wavelink Avalanche

3M deploys Wavelink software to manage ruggedized mobile devices nationwide

3M has established itself as a global leader in a number of markets from health care and highway safety to office products and optical films for LCD displays. The company’s success begins with its ability to apply technologies to an endless array of real-world customer needs. This is a foundation the company doesn’t overlook when taking care of its own operational needs, as it utilizes technology to increase efficiency and streamline costs.

MANAGING HUNDREDS OF MOBILE DEVICES ACROSS 30 LOCATIONS

As a Fortune 500 company with worldwide sales of $25.3 billion and more than 79,000 employees, 3M has the monstrous task of managing the infrastructure for all its employees. This becomes even more complicated when you take into account the mobile workers that are in the company’s dozens of warehouses, manufacturing plants and distribution centers in the United States alone.

The company uses ruggedized mobile devices in its approximately 30 plants nationwide. Each location can vary from half a dozen devices up to 80 devices per plant. In order to maintain a high level of security, the company regularly changes the encryption keys on the devices. In addition there are a number of other processes, such as updating the firmware, pushing out configuring updates and changing the SSID on each device, each of which can be very time consuming. The process of configuring each device would typically take about a week.

ENTER WAVELINK AVALANCHE MOBILITY CENTER

As 3M considered the best way to manage the wide range of devices used in its warehouses and distribution centers, it turned to Wavelink, having some familiarity with its product line after using Wavelink’s Terminal Emulation for many of the company’s devices. 3M initially had a handful of devices being managed by Wavelink Avalanche Mobility Center (MC), but that has now grown to hundreds of devices.

3M compared Avalanche MC to other solutions, they found it to be the most comprehensive solution that could also manage devices from multiple vendors. Dean Svela, who manages 3M’s mobile infrastructure, said, “We were using a lot of old Intermec devices along with a number of devices from LXE. We are now starting to introduce some Motorola devices to our network, and Wavelink lets us manage all of them centrally from a single console. And it was still less expensive than the proprietary solutions we evaluated.”

A WEEK'S WORTH OF WORK IN 30 MINUTES

Svela immediately saw a huge time savings in updating its devices using Avalanche MC. “Being able to remotely and centrally manage the devices made a huge difference. Now we don’t need to have our IT people at each location manually find each of the devices to update them. Previously, if one person had to go find all 30 devices to update the encryption key, it would take him all week. Now with Avalanche we can get it all done in about 30 minutes.”

Prior to using Wavelink Avalanche, each mobile device was manually configured in different locations by different people, and over a period of time, there were almost as many different configurations as there were devices. Wavelink Avalanche has made it much easier for 3M to standardize the configuration on each of its devices. The scan-to-configure feature allows administrators to create a profile as a barcode that is then simply scanned by the device that needs to be configured.

“We have really simplified our device management through the ability to push out a configuration or use the scan-to-configure feature,” said Svela. “We now know each device is configured exactly the same as all the others, which makes it much easier to troubleshoot and maintain from an IT management standpoint.”

The central management console gives 3M greater visibility into the mobile devices on the network. Each plant or location can be pulled up so the administrator can see exactly how many devices and what type of devices are being used along with the status of the updates or configuration enabling them to easily see where potential problems may exist.

Expanding on its original needs, 3M has extended the reach of Avalanche to training. For example, its Taiwan location is able to use the remote control feature of Avalanche to connect to the Wavelink Avalanche server in the United States. They can then open a Motorola device through remote control, and display it in the training room in Taiwan to train new users on the device. By extending the capability of Avalanche, 3M is able to see a greater return on investment.

While Svela has not needed to call Wavelink customer support very often, he appreciates the responsiveness from them. “They have been absolutely great to work with. When I have had to contact them in the past, they get right back to me in just a few minutes and quickly and professionally make sure I keep running smoothly.”

FUTURE PLANS

3M uses Wavelink Avalanche MC to give them complete visibility and control of their wireless infrastructure and mobile devices from a central console. The company has found it to be the ideal solution to manage devices from multiple vendors to ease the configuration, deployment and management of the wireless network and infrastructure.

As 3M moves forward, Svela’s primary objective for managing the company’s mobile devices is to get everything on Avalanche MC as older devices are upgraded. They also plan to look at the voice capabilities they can add to their devices with Wavelink Speakeasy to further improve efficiency and data entry accuracy.

Svela concluded, “The biggest advantage for us is the time and money we save. When we are able to remotely update firmware and radio drivers, push out new configurations and easily update the WEP encryption keys, we are able to drastically reduce the strain on the IT staff at each site so they are able to focus on other projects.”