Vocollect Heralds The Voice-Enabled Warehouse

Vocollect today announced the emergence of the new “voice-enabled warehouse” era, the next generation in distribution center (DC)/warehouse material-handling management, along with solutions from Vocollect that will help to accelerate operational success in this new era. The new Vocollect voice-enabled warehouse helps customers more effectively address various business challenges, including growth, cost reduction, productivity, throughput, accuracy, traceability, and product mix changes.

During the past five years, distribution processes have moved from paper-centric to RF-centric, and now they are moving to voice-centric. Market research conducted by Vocollect and confirmed by several independent studies shows that voice technology is a widespread solution for improving business results in logistics operations across many industries and geographic regions. With penetration in more than 10 percent of warehouses in Europe and North America, complemented by emerging growth in Asia-Pacific and Latin America, voice technology is now used daily at thousands of work sites by hundreds of thousands of workers. Further, voice is increasingly used across many workflows and processes beyond picking.

“Companies have long embraced voice-centric solutions as a highly effective tool for product order selection,” according to Steve Banker, director of supply chain management at ARC Advisory Group. “But now they are awakening to the vast potential voice technology offers in other distribution activities such as put-away, put-to-store, and cycle-counting. This is causing many companies to reexamine their internal processes to see how voice might be applied to many distribution activities,” he said.

It is well-documented that mobile workers are more productive and focused, and thereby more accurate, when using wearable, hands-free, eyes-free solutions. Multiple case studies validate the benefits of voice, with productivity improvements of 20 to 40 percent, order accuracy improvements to greater than 99.995 percent, traceability of controlled items and order fulfillment agility.

New Vocollect Solution Sets for Unique Customer Scenarios

To implement the next-generation voice-enabled warehouse, throughout 2010 Vocollect will introduce four new integrated solution sets to help meet evolving customer needs:

• Premium Wearable Voice Solution – A next-generation, voice-centric, extensible solution (supporting adjunct scanners and displays for occasional use) that offers high performance, flexibility and investment protection for customers seeking double-digit gains in productivity and accuracy across multiple workflows;
• Industrial Wearable Voice Solution – A voice-centric, extensible solution (supporting adjunct scanners when necessary) that offers high performance, along with a level of flexibility and investment protection for customers wanting to enjoy the benefits of voice across multiple workflows;
• Light Industrial Wearable Voice Solution – A new voice-only, light industrial solution for customers seeking the benefits of voice in a value-based solution; and
• Vehicle Mount Voice Solution – A new voice-centric, extensible solution (supporting adjunct scanners when necessary) that offers high performance, along with a level of flexibility and investment protection, for customers seeking the benefits of voice for vehicle-based workflows.

“The voice industry has just begun to tap the business improvement potential that voice-centric solutions bring to the supply chain industry and beyond,” asserted Joe Pajer, chief operating officer of Vocollect and president of its Supply Chain Solutions division. “Vocollect invented the application of voice technology for industrial use and has achieved significant penetration into the picking operations of the largest DCs and warehouses across North America and Europe. We are now moving aggressively to lead this market to the next level—extending the benefits of voice for all workflows to the remaining 90 percent of the market, in medium to large DCs and warehouses across the globe. Vocollect will, through product leadership and the most experienced and extensive supply chain partnership network in the world, continue to lead this voice revolution in the DC/warehouse market into the future,” said Pajer.