Case Study: 3Com Palm Access Safety & Security Checklist

description:

passC is a Palm-based checklist application used by 3Com's facility management personnel to discover and track safety issues.

client:

At the time of development, 3Com was the second largest networking company in the world with over $6 billion in annual revenues, and more than 13,200 employees operating from 160 offices in 45 countries. The Palm PDA was owned by 3Com.

problem:

In their exemplary efforts to maintain their buildings in the safest and most secure manner, 3Com needed a simple way to conduct site surveys at least 3 times a day to look for issues with such items as fire extinguishers, eye wash stations, access lighting, and ingress/egress blockages.

solution:

In 1999, Clearbuilt designed and developed a Palm based application that integrated with an already existing, Clearbuilt designed and maintained web-based Safety Processing System. Barcodes were placed throughout the major facilities on the items to be checked. A Palm PDA with an integrated barcode reader was used to scan the barcodes during each facility tour. The items were scanned and either marked as verified or the user could choose from a list of typical problems for the item scanned. Once the tour was complete, the palm unit was hot-synced and the data would be immediately available in the web-based system. If an item was marked with a problem, the appropriate facility manger was notified automatically.

features:

  1. a carefully designed user-interface that required little training
  2. barcodes and context sensitive checklists used to dramatically reduce data input
  3. the entire process was paperless and more than met the safety standards required by OSHA
  4. results were available on the corporate intranet to any manager with the appropriate access level
  5. took advantage of the Palm, a device made by 3Com, to meet the project requirements