All companies today are looking for ways to pick and ship the perfect order. For supermarket retailer Giant Eagle Inc., a key component of making their orders more perfect is voice-directed orderpicking.

The company has installed voice systems (Vocollect, 412-829-8145) at three of its distribution facilities with two sites awaiting systems. More than 300 individual units are now in place. And according to Larry Baldauf, senior vice president of distribution and logistics, the results have been excellent.

At the refrigerated meats DC in Butler, Penn., the number of mispicked cases has dropped 88%. Orders with shorted cases has fallen 79%. Both are significant improvements not just in terms of statistics, but in sheer volume. Butler ships 10 million cases a year to Giant Eagle's 200 stores in Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, Northern West Virginia and Western Maryland.

Baldauf points out, however, that the benefits of the new voice system don't stop there. Picking productivity has climbed 8%. Meanwhile, 100 hours a week has been saved in data input at the Butler facility alone. Return on investment, says Baldauf, is less than 2 years.

The voice systems at all three locations operate in the same way. Workers wear a headset with microphone that communicates wirelessly with the warehouse management system. The worker is directed to a specific pick location. Once at the location, the worker reads into the microphone the unique check digit that hangs above it. If the check digit is incorrect, the system tells the worker what the correct number is, and waits for a correct check digit. When the check digit is correct, the system tells the worker the quantity to pick. At the completion of the pick, the worker requests the next pick location and is directed there.

Not only has picking and order accuracy improved, says Baldauf, but the hands-free, eyes-free system has made picking much easier for workers. "I don't think we could get people to go back to pick labels," he says.