Special technology report Voice and WMS


Gavin Clark, commercial manager


vendors such as Voxware naturally continuing to evolve their product offerings in response to end-user requirements. “In the past, Voice technology has suffered from being too complicated, too expensive, and too difficult to change,”


he said. “Voxware has delivered advances in software that successfully attack these issues, and we believe this is enabling a growing number of companies to consider Voice as a cost-effective way to improve their distribution operations.”


Out of reach Gavin Clark, commercial manager at Snapfulfil, reflects that, typically‚Voice‘ has historically been for the larger operators. “The costs involved in licensing and implementing the solutions always took Voice out of reach for the majority,” he said. “In recent years, the move towards Software as a Service (SaaS) business models has moved not only WMS but also Voice-directed solutions towards a


“


monthly subscription, which has made the benefits of Voice available to a far wider audience and at a far more cost-effective price point.”


Richard Adams, vice president of sales


For Richard Adams, vice president of sales at Vocollect EMEA, one of the most striking developments for Voice-directed work is the use of Voice beyond traditional picking applications. “While some Voice


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MANUFACTURING &LOGISTICS


IT July 2011


customers migrate from paper to Voice across multiple workflows from the outset, others typically begin with Voice in the picking workflow,” he said. “Once they realise double- digit gains in productivity and accuracy in picking, they quickly discover the value of deploying Voice to other workflows for their hands-busy, eyes-busy workers. They soon find increased productivity and accuracy benefits, as well as efficiencies such as a 10 to 20 per cent reduction in warehouse vehicles,


“


What has developed in the past few years is a much wider range of available integration methods to suit different sizes and types of warehouse operation and the integration preference of customers and WMS/ERP companies.” – Richard Adams, Vocollect.


which lowers capital expenditures and ongoing maintenance.”


So what’s stimulating such changes? Adams commented that Vocollect‘s customers are constantly looking for new ways to boost performance and cost savings across their supply chains, while coping with fluctuations in demand and the increasing pressure from their own customers to deliver on-time and error-free, every time. “Specifically, companies are particularly pressed to fully exploit their technology


investments,” he said. “Major developments in Voice technology have also been driven by the global recession of the past few years. These


challenges bring enormous opportunities for the Voice industry as a whole, and Vocollect is at the forefront of this transformation of distribution and logistics processes. Vocollect’s Voice technology is helping companies do more with less and to maximise performance and profitability.”


David Stanhope, CEO at VoiteQ, comments that Voice is increasingly being used for more than just picking; such as goods in, replenishment and inventory. “Although VoiteQ Voice-enabled all warehouse operations almost 13 years ago it only now seems to be being widely talked about taking Voice beyond picking,” he said. “Voice picking


www.logisticsit.com


Some SaaS WMS vendors even


include Voice in their overall package, bringing the best of both worlds together for their clients.” – Gavin Clark, Snapfulfil.


continues to provide the ‘quick win’ by producing a rapid ROI, but after that investment has been made users are increasingly looking for other areas in the operation that could also benefit from Voice to maximise their ROI. This has lead to the expansion of Voice ‘tasks’ being created to meet these requirements. Increase in multi- channel retailing lead to different types of pick in the same operation, with typically single picks being used to fulfil individual customer


orders, whilst still using standard order pick to fulfil large orders for stores. More functionality has had to be added to Voice solutions to cope with the different ways in which these orders are fulfilled within the operations; sometimes splitting pickers and assigning them to one specific type of order, enabling users to ‘fast track’ priority customer orders within the system, ‘pick and pack’ for individual customer orders yet still use pallets/cages/totes for store orders.”


According to Stanhope, these developments are mostly due to the changing requirements of the end user via multi-channel, and the need to ‘sweat the assets’ to make the most of the initial investment. However, he adds that many of the vendors saw the changes within


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