Voice is loud and clear in the supply chain

A couple of years ago, when everyone’s focus was on RFID, Steve Banker at ARC Advisory Group asked me what seemed to be a no-brainer of a question: Name the data collection technology first championed by Wal-Mart that’s really taking off in the supply chain.

Of course I said RFID. Wrong! The correct answer was voice recognition technology.

Since then, voice has continued to take off. While it has yet to penetrate the manufacturing market, where touch screens and bar codes still predominate, more and more I see voice showing up as a complement to bar codes, especially for putaway and picking operations in the DCs I write about.

Last week, I spoke to Larry Sweeney, one of the founders of Vocollect and the company’s chief customer advocate, what’s going on in voice today. Sweeney highlighted several themes.  

Globalization: I might be wrong, but for the most part, voice has seemed like a North American phenomenon, primarily because the leading technology providers are U.S.-based. That is changing. “In 2008, our sales revenue from outside North American will surpass our revenues from inside North America,” Sweeney said. Who’s hot? Sweeney says Vocollect has been making inroads in Europe for some time, but now he is seeing growth in Asia and Latin America. “At our last meeting with resellers in Pittsburgh, one of the presenters was a Mexican grocer that just built a new DC that is 100% voice-directed,” Sweeney said.

Adoption: Wholesale grocery distributors were the earliest adopters of voice, using it for order selection. For a long time, that’s where it stood. That’s no longer the case. “Specialty retailers, apparel and pharmaceutical are all adopting voice,” says Sweeney. “We also installed it in GM’s distribution network, where they’re using voice to pick spare parts as well for the manufacturing line.” Another hot market: 3PLs. Like wholesale food distribution, the 3PL industry operates on razor thin margins. Voice allows a facility to easily scale up or down along with its business. 

Manufacturing: For some reason, voice has still not shown up on the manufacturing line. Will that change? “I haven’t seen it yet,” Sweeney says, “but now that we’re in GM’s spare parts distribution network, it wouldn’t surprise me if we move into their manufacturing operations.”

What’s next: Think health care, especially nurses. Okay, it’s not materials handling, but like order selectors, nurses work best when their hands and eyes are free. “We’re applying voice to nurses and nurses’ aides in long-term care facilities,” said Sweeney. “They can communicate with a back-end computer system that directs their work without being slowed down by a hand-held device.”