Tough enough

Sildarvinnslan hf. is one of Iceland's leading fisheries operators, as well as the country's largest catcher and processor of pelagic species. It is also the leading producer of fishmeal and oil with over forty years' experience in the industry.

Based in Neskaupstadur, in Iceland's East Fjords, Sildarvinnslan and its partners operate from 13 locations around Iceland, as well as in the US and Greenland. At present, the company's catch quota and that of its partners totals 30,000 cod-equivalent tons per year. Sildarvinnslan and its partners employ some 370 workers.

Sildarvinnslan operates an ultra-modern production plant for processing whitefish, pelagic species and salted herring. At the same time, the company operates five well-equipped fishmeal and oil factories, and a fleet consisting of a freezing trawler, ice trawler and two pelagic vessels, in addition to which its partners operate six pelagic vessels.

Two years ago the company built a large freezer warehouse in Neskaupstadur and shortly after started looking for ruggedized mobile computers to be deployed at their warehouse at the fish processing plant. "It was obvious that the unit needs to be very robust to withstand the harsh conditions where we work", explains Jon Bjorn Bragason, Systems manager from Sildarvinnslan. "Before we found Xplore's iX104 Tablet PC, we were looking at other units on the market, but they did not meet the level of mobility and high data processing capacity that is important for us." Xplore's iX104 Tablet PC was introduced to Sildarvinnslan by Xplore's authorized reseller in Iceland, Bodtaekni Ehf., who understood the requirements for mission-critical reliability in demanding conditions. The plant's rigorous environment, and the physical stress to the tablet in the forklift mount configuration are extremely demanding on the hardware. The tablet is exposed to varying, punishing external conditions and to a constant, heavy vibration, as well.

Xplore's iX104 All Terrain Tablet PC's are mounted to forklifts from where the information is transferred via a local access point to the central warehouse management system Navision Attain- WiseWarehouse. A USB barcode scanner is attached to the USB interface on the tablet. All received parcels containing fish products - herring, salmon, cod fish - have barcode labels on them. The codes are recorded directly on to the central system as they arrive using barcode scanners. Additionally the application running on the tablet shows a graphical layout of the warehouse. The user can, with minimal touch inputs, click the right spot on the display indicating where the goods are stored. This storage place is then saved to the system.

The tablet is also used for regular Microsoft Office programs and emails. "We like the ergonomics of the iX104. It is easy to handle in mobile use. It 's also important for us that the tablet can run the software we use and the latest operating system available from Microsoft", Bragason explains. According to Bragason the use of Xplore's iX104 Tablet PC has greatly improved the efficiency and accurateness at the stock control level due to the real-time confirmation of arrival and dispatch of goods.