While voice-directed equipment has established itself in the warehouse in picking, there remain many other applications for this hands-free, eyes-free technology.

"Voice-directed technology allows users to converse with the warehouse management system without having to stop any work," says Larry Sweeney, vice president of product management for Vocollect (www.vocollect.com). Sweeney spoke at the Productivity Convention & Expo held in Nashville.

He says that voice-directed technology, interacting with the functional tasks of the warehouse software, can easily adapt to batch selection and put-to-store work, replenishment, receiving, bulk transfer, case and piece picking and cycle counts.

Integration with radio frequency identification (RFID) is yet another option.

"Voice is a logical complement to RFID since both technologies are hands-free and eyes-free," says Sweeney. "The voice directs the work and the RFID system can be used to confirm the work has been completed properly.

He believes that some shakeout has yet to occur in the frequency and tag issues concerning RFID. Eventually, he foresees a day when voice systems will be receiving an RFID signal into the voice terminals and integrating the two technologies.