From SCDigest's OnTarget e-Magazine
- Oct. 9, 2013 -
RFID and AIDC News: Important Trends in Voice Technology in Distribution
From Increasing Use of Voice with DC Automation to "Gamification," we Look at Four Voice Trends
SCDigest Editorial Staff
As Voice technology in distribution has gone totally mainstream, working in thousands of distribution centers, it has still hardly reached anything like a plateau.
Growth continues to be strong. A recent detailed market analysis by the analysts at Voice Information Associates found that the number of Voice-based terminals grew in 2012 by about 17% over 2011, and that growth is expected to continue at about that same rate over the next five years. That is far faster than the growth rate for traditional wireless terminals in distribution.
SCDigest Says: |
 |
Voice provides a solution that offers the best of those traditional alternatives. Pickers have their hands free, and can rapidly put cases on the belt, counting off the number of cartons to the WMS as they do so.
|
|
What Do You Say?
|
|
|
|
The ways in which "use cases" for Voice are expanding was nicely captured in a recent supply chain thought leaders video discussion between SCDigest editor Dan Gilmore and Jay Armant, VP of Product Management at Vocollect, (now a Honeywell company following its acquisition of Vocollect parent Intermec) on interesting new trends in the Voice landscape.
That excellent discussion can be found here: Interesting New Trends in Voice Technology in Distribution
The first trend Armant cited is that as many companies are investing to automated their DCs, especially for ecommerce, they are recognizing that Voice can usually be a nice complement to that automation. In the past, it may have been viewed more as an automation versus Voice decision. Now, Armant noted, Voice can be seen as a way to enhance the ROI of the total investment.
For example, Armant said that Vocollect is working with a customer on a pilot program in which a case picker would give Voice commands that would signal the pallet jack to move to the next location, savings the seconds it takes to get on and off the vehicle. Over the course of time, those few seconds for each pick add up to real productivity gains.
Gilmore observed that Voice can add significant value in the traditional batch pick-to-belt process with downstream sortation for case picking. Companies using that approach usually have to select between two unattractive alternatives: (1) Having the picker just count off in their heads the right number of cartons to pick, which frequently leads to costly under or over-picks; or (2) Scanning each carton, which provides the accuracy, but at the cost of a big hit to productivity. (Pick by label is also relatively unproductive.)
Voice provides a solution that offers the best of those traditional alternatives. Pickers have their hands free, and can rapidly put cases on the belt, counting off the number of cartons to the WMS as they do so.
The second trend Armant sees is use of Voice to enhance traceability capabilities, especially in the food sector. He noted that a Gartner study at the beginning of 2013 found that improving traceability was the number two priority of supply chain executives.
He said some companies are starting to use what he calls a "voice pick code" on the label. That four-digit number is tied back to the lot and expiration data information for that case. By simply reading the code into the Voice system when the carton is being picked or perhaps handled elsewhere in the supply chain, detailed traceability can be achieve.
This is important, because cases in the food industry are rarely scanned at the carton level today, and even if they were it would again represent a costly approach given the need to pick up and put down a wireless terminal.
Armant noted this Voice plus pick code approach may become even more pertinent as the requirements for the Food Safety Modernization Act evolve.
(RFID and AIDC Story Continued Below)
|
The third trend is the use of Voice expanding in the DC. Traditionally, Voice has been used for order picking. Armant says customers are increasingly leveraging their initial investments in a Voice network in a facility and their expertise in using Voice by applying it in other applications.