DHL Supply Chain is rolling out the next phase of its Vision Picking Program following a successful trial of the augmented reality technology in the Netherlands.
DHL said last week that since the trial, it has refined the vision picking solution along with partners Google, Vuzix and Ubimax, and that it is now expanding the program across different industry sectors on a global basis.
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As SCDigest reported earlier this year, DHL has been doing a lot of research in this area. The concept of augmented reality means adding something digital (text, graphics, video) to what a person such as DC worker sees, genrally using some form of smart glasses.
The augmented reality can come in through several ways. Imagine that when a picker is moving down an aisle on a pallet jack that the location for the pick is "lit up" in some way through the glasses, so the picker can see exactly where the next stop is and can manage speed of the vehicle according.
Pickers on foot or on a vehicle could have optimal pick path similarly visualized, and perhaps most interestingly, picking to a cart - common in ecommerce fulfillment and beyond - could utilize a visual map of what products at a given location are required in what quantities across the cart bins. So, it is in a sense like pick to light from a worker's perspective, without the need for the physical lights themselves.
Initially, DHL was testing use of a finger-mounted blue tooth ring scanner connected to the glasses using bar codes for product identification, with the smart glasses showing where to place the picked item on a cart. That according to a presentation DHL gave at the Warehouse Education and Research Council (WERC) annual conference in April.
But it now appears DHL will use the glasses to read the bar codes as well without need for the ring scanner.
DHL did a three-week pilot with Ricoh in The Netherlands that demonstrated 25% picking improvement versus RF (though one could argue the comparison should really be to voice and/or "smart carts", not RF).
In the expanded pilot, pickers will be equipped with advanced smart glasses which visually display each item that needs to be picked, and then read the bar code confirming the pick through the smart glasses, with the glasses then showing where each picked item needs to be placed on a pick cart. This improve productivity through hands-free operation and eliminating the need for pickers to look down at an RF terminal. Picking accuracy is also improved, DHL says.
Interestingly, at the WERC conference DHL said in testing that the picks for a batch or wave are all sent to the glasses at the start of the work, not dynamically for each pick. This, DHL said, was to ensure no delays in processing from pick to pick, especially necessary if say the glasses were to show an image of the product to be selected.
That seems to SCDigest like it is taking us back in effect to the old batch data collection approach, before that was utterly eliminated in favor of real-time RF.
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 Regardless, DHL says the smart glasses will be piloted that throughout 2016 across various industries such as consumer electronics, retail, consumer goods and automotive industries. The data available from these pilots will further determine the technology's potential for broader implementation. The pilot sites are spread across the United States, mainland Europe and the United Kingdom, with the Ricoh facility in The Netherlands being the launch site for this new exploration phase.
DHL says the technology has the most application in ecommerce distribution centers, where workers need to find a specific items to pick in dense storage areas.
The company also says the approach could be especially valuable during peak periods, when DHL (and its US subsidiary Exel) hire thousands of temporary workers.
"These are people off the street who are not familiar with our warehouses, don't know where anything is, and we see huge potential for that type of situation, especially with training," a DHL executive said.
"The Vision Picking Program is DHL Supply Chain's first translation of what augmented reality solutions can look like for supply chains. The broad spectrum in which the technology can be applied across various sectors is exciting to us, and the potential of this technology for business is still largely untapped. We believe this program is a game changer in how we run our supply chain operations and deliver added value to our customers," said Markus Voss, CIO Supply Chain for DHL.
DHL is working with both Google and Vuzix on the smart glasses, and Ubimax on the software that controls the glasses.
Interestingly, Google halted retail sales of Google Glass in January after poor sales and a backlash over the device's ability to record video in public places without other noticing. In July, it was reported that the company would begin distributing a new version of Glass geared towards business applications.
There has been much interest in smart glasses in distribution, specifically for order picking, but not much activity beyond trade show type demonstrations from vendors such as Softeon and Knapp Automation.
The DHL pilots would seem to be the most aggressive of any smart glass deployments by far for order picking to date.
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