A Tablet You Can Count On

Brynna King

Soil, water and sun. These three ingredients keep trees and shrubs growing green and lush at Carlton Plants, a 1,750-acre nursery in Dayton, Oregon. But they also present serious challenges to the nursery’s inventory management efforts.

That is, they presented serious challenges until Carlton Plants began tracking inventory with a rugged tablet computer—the Algiz 7 from Handheld Group. Before the nursery employed this electronic data collection system, two workers took turns using pencil and paper to record information about the plants’ health, including hand-drawn depictions. Now they enter data directly into a rugged tablet as they survey plants in the field, saving enormous amounts of time and improving their inventory’s accuracy.

Pictured: The Algiz 7 is a rugged computer, so it can withstand all kinds of weather conditions, including rain.

Growing pains
Carlton Plants is located in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, which is famous for its vineyards and other agricultural enterprises. The cool, wet weather conditions that make the valley a superb growing climate also
create a difficult work environment for employees who count and inspect the nursery’s trees, shrubs and rootstock.

“On most days, our outdoor inventory workers trudge through mud and water from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.,” said Esteban Herrera, inventory and quality control manager at Carlton Plants. “Paper records would get wet and muddy, and we were forced to redo work if we couldn’t make out the information.”

Damaging or misplacing paper records sometimes meant recollecting data for entire fields, with as many as 165,000 plants per field. When papers did make it back to the office unscathed, the handwritten data still had to be manually entered into a computer spreadsheet and then turned over to another worker for entry into the main computer system—a process that took hours.

“I spent my days hand-calculating and fishing through papers to find information. It was incredibly time-consuming,” Esteban said. “That was time I could have spent on other projects to benefit the company.”

Manual data collection was not only highly inefficient; it also compromised the inventory’s accuracy. Between interpreting someone else’s handwritten notes from damaged reports and then transferring those notes from papers to digital spreadsheets, the likelihood of human error had become uncomfortably high.

What does “rugged” mean?
A rugged (or ruggedized) computer is a computer specifically designed to operate reliably in harsh usage environments and conditions.

A rugged mobile solution
It was clear to Esteban that Carlton Plants needed to replace its pencil-and-paper system with a more reliable data-collection tool. But he also knew that rain and mud don’t mesh well with consumer electronics.

He began researching durable field computers that can operate all day in wet conditions and his search led him to Handheld US, a company based in Corvallis, Oregon. Handheld provided an Algiz 7 unit for Carlton Plants to test and Esteban quickly found that the computer met all of the nursery’s requirements—and then some.

The Algiz 7 is a fully portable, fully rugged field data collector with long-lasting, hot-swappable batteries (meaning you can change the batteries without having to shut it down). Programmable hotkey buttons and 4+1 navigational keys, plus an on-screen soft keyboard make the unit extremely easy to use—even for workers at Carlton Plants who had no previous computer experience.

Now inventory workers enter data directly into the Algiz 7 using simple push buttons and the QWERTY keyboard and, instead of drawing pictures, can easily snap high-quality photographs of plants in the field using the tablet’s built-in 5-megapixel camera.

The Algiz 7 runs Windows 7 Ultimate, which allowed Esteban to create a custom Microsoft Access database right on the tablet that stores information securely and integrates seamlessly with desktop PC software. He uses the database to generate instant reports, aggregate inventory numbers based on plant variety codes and filter data according to special notes. He also can set parameters that will alert workers if entered data may be incorrect, based on deviations from year-over-year comparisons.

After a count, workers can send spreadsheet data instantly and directly to an office computer via Wi-Fi or a USB cord—with no more time wasted entering data manually, transferring information, hand-calculating inventory totals, creating reports or finding specific data. When questions arise about charting and notes, all the count information is close at hand and easy to filter within the database.

“In one database, on a handheld computer, I can manage information that used to be kept on hundreds of pieces of paper,” Esteban said. “All the information is in one spot.”

Easy as 1, 2, 3
The Algiz 7 has eliminated countless worker hours dedicated to data entry, allowing those workers to spend extra time on other, more enjoyable projects. It’s also saved resources such as paper and ink, and improved the reliability of the nursery’s recordkeeping. Another unexpected benefit?

“Our workers have grown in confidence since they have seen they can use this device without any computer training. It opens the door for more possibilities,” Esteban said.

So far, the Algiz 7 has survived Oregon spring, summer and fall weather conditions, ranging from muddy and soaking wet to dusty and 95F. Carlton Plants has no problems to report.

Introducing rugged technology was a natural next step for Carlton Plants and adding up the benefits couldn’t be simpler: Millions of plants, plus one rugged tablet computer, has led to enormous time and cost savings for Esteban and his team. GT

---

Brynna King is a freelance writer and editor based in Portland, Oregon. She can be reached at Word Jones, www.wordjones.com.