Michal Marek The German energy company RWE is going to buy a thousand iPads for its employees, within the MobileFirst program, which was created thanks to the cooperation of Apple and IBM. With this partnership, the company from Cupertino wanted to break into the corporate sphere as effectively as possible, and the deal concluded with RWE is proof that the cooperation between the two companies is bearing fruit. At RWE, they want to reduce some operating costs thanks to iPads.
RWE employees who work in the field in the German coal mine Hambach started using the iPad mini already in December last year. Andreas Lamken, who at RWE is responsible for communication with the media, the magazine Bloomberg said that iPads already save 30 minutes of paperwork a day.
The company has so far involved "several hundred" tablets in the work and is about to involve more in the work process. These are due to arrive at two more mines in the coming months, and the total number is expected to reach one thousand.
"We're under a lot of pressure on costs, so we're trying to find a way to be efficient," Lamken said. Bloomberg. However, according to him, it is still too early to say how much the company will save thanks to iPads. However, their deployment is also intended to help motivate RWE employees, who often use Apple devices at home as well.
The iPads are intended to save the RWE company, which extracts an incredible 100 million tons of coal per year, costs associated primarily with the coordination of workers and equipment repairs. Thanks to tablets from Apple, the company wants to better assign work to individual workers according to their current location.
For example, the already mentioned Hambach mine has an area of thirty square kilometers. On such an area, effective dispatching of employees can save a really large amount of time and money. The iPads will also help RWE predict faults at individual stations and better organize their maintenance.
At the end of November, as part of the announcement of financial results, Apple said that the corporate sector brought the company around 25 billion dollars, or roughly 10% of turnover, within twelve months. The key to this result was the previously mentioned cooperation between Apple and IBM, in which IBM develops software for corporate use and, thanks to its contacts, also helps with the actual deployment of iPads in corporations.
Wouldn't another tablet solve the same need with less cost? I would be interested in how exactly iPads save RWE time and money.
Well, it's a bit out of line, but I think coal mining should be phased out, not increased.
I would say that IBM has created some app for them that is only compatible with ios, so there is no room for other tablets. Simple as hell.