Leading technology and natural health work together for Pharmavite LLC. Pharmavite® LLC. manufactures Nature Made® vitamins and minerals, SAM-e, Nature's Resource® herbal products, Optimize™ fiber/calcium beverages, and other supplements designed to promote health. They have also successfully used wireless communications in their facilities for more than a decade, migrating from 900 MHz systems to 2.4 GHz 802.11b networks while serving diverse internal and external constituencies.

"We first started [using wireless infrastructure in our supply chain] in mid-1999," notes Ray Allen, Senior Systems Developer at Pharmavite. "We started out with compliance labeling for shipping containers, and we needed some way to get bar codes on the cases. The only problem was our packaging lines are long, and running wires was difficult." The answer was a 900 MHz system from LXE installed in Pharmavite's packaging facility in California and connected to the Pharmavite AS/400 server using 5250 terminal emulation.

The potential of the wireless infrastructure invited new services, including a physical inventory application that justified installation of the RF backbone in three additional California facilities (manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution). This application reduced the inventory counting effort from four days twice a year to two days once a year.

The 900 MHz system served Pharmavite's operations constituencies admirably, but by the late 1990s, managers began asking for wireless access to their full-screen AS/400 applications. That drove Mr. Allen's team to begin planning for a transition from 900 MHz to 2.4 GHz infrastructure, even before 802.11b products were widely available. At this point, he had four facilities and about a hundred users accessing AS/400 applications over the LXE 900 MHz backbone.

First, they shifted end devices, opting for the newly released LXE MX3 that was more compact and offered a brighter screen than their current devices, but would work without modification to the AS/400 code and could be modified in the field to run use a (at the time unavailable) 2.4 GHz radio card.

Confident they had an 802.11b path for their manufacturing facilities, they installed an 802.11b network in their corporate offices to provide notebook computer roaming for managers. They also installed an 802.11b infrastructure in their operations facilities so mobile managers can remain productive.

Now, the 802.11b and 900 MHz backbones run in parallel. Some older production devices use the 900 MHz backbone, some production devices use the 2.4 GHz backbone, but Mr. Allen notes "as far as the users are concerned, there is no difference."