Raise your voice: Voice recognition gets traction in the warehouse
Bob Trebilcock -- Modern Materials Handling, 3/11/2004
Here's a question: what hot data collection technology got a big boost because Wal-Mart adopted it?
If you answered RFID (radio frequency identification), you'd be half right. The other half of the answer is voice recognition technology. Just as important, voice is being integrated with real-time warehouse management systems (WMS) for hands-free picking in the warehouse and distribution center.
"Voice has absolutely gotten traction in the market," says Steve Banker, service director, supply chain management, at ARC Advisory Group.
As with RFID, Wal-Mart was one of the first adopters of the technology, implementing voice recognition systems in its grocery distribution centers in the late 1990's. Now, voice is moving beyond grocery into a broad range of industries. "The sweet spot is large warehouses with less than less-than-case and each picking, particularly pick-to-cart," says Banker. "In any DC with large transaction volumes, the math starts to work pretty quickly."
What explains the sudden interest in voice? For starts, the technology is now proven. "Several years ago, voice was still in the innovation stage," says Steve Gerrard, vice president of marketing for Voxware. "Early products that worked great in the lab, didn't work in industrial settings. Now the technology has improved and the pioneers have proven that you can achieve substantial benefits."
Unlike RFID, which may require significant changes to a WMS system, voice integrates relatively easily with WMS systems. The technology complements and extends WMS functionality, especially applications that optimize picking tasks like task interleaving.
But the most important driver may be the early adopter success stories around reduced errors and improved productivity, even when compared to bar code scanning technologies, according to Aaron Miller, principal with Tompkins Associates.
Take Associated Wholesale Grocers, a grocery wholesaler in Kansas City, where productivity increased from 8-to-15%, depending on the area, when it converted a 1 million sq ft facility from scanning to voice. Workers who no longer have to stop to scan are more productive. "I was in an installation recently where the order picker was on a walkie rider. He was able to keep gliding while he picked orders because he didn't have to stop to scan a location," says Aaron Miller, principal with Tompkins Associates. "It was the most fluid picking I've ever seen."
Facilities accustomed to order accuracy rates of 99.5% with scanning technology, will see improvements to 99.64 to 99.8% using voice because workers aren't looking down at an wireless scanner for instructions. "That may not sound like a big deal until you consider that Associated Wholesale Grocers ships 62 million cases a year," Miller says. "Voice allowed them to correctly pick an extra 74,000 cases that will not have to be repacked or brought back and replaced."
At an average cost of $20 per case, that's an annual savings of $1.5 million. That's a figure most people can hear loud and clear.
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