Voice and WMS Special technology report
workflows such as cycle-counting, receiving, loading, put-away, replenishment, put-to-store and more. “This number is growing, as executives continue to recognise the impact that Voice can bring to their logistics operations,” he said. “While some Voice customers migrate from paper to Voice across multiple workflows from the outset, others typically begin with Voice in the picking workflow. Once they realise double-digit gains in productivity and accuracy in picking, they quickly discover the value of deploying Voice to other workflows. They soon find increased productivity and accuracy benefits, as well as a 10 to 20 per cent reduction in vehicles, which lowers capital expenditures and ongoing maintenance.”
world of Voice-directed systems and WMS software in the near future? Harper believes that the next year or two will make or break the SaaS model of warehouse management system delivery. He added that we are likely to see Voice driving more warehouse processes, and the next couple of years should prove whether or not Voice can deliver an acceptable ROI for back-of-store processes in the retail business. Clark makes the point that the number of business-to- consumer shipments is growing in the UK, with an increasing focus on service levels. “Many WMS companies are now offering carrier integration, but this technology will be required much earlier in the buying cycle, even before the checkout, ” he said.
Clark also observes that consumers are being offered later delivery cut-off times, more precise timed deliveries and other delivery options by the major online players. And this, he says, will need to be offered as a standard by anybody wishing to compete in this space. “Just look at services like next-day and free delivery; five years ago these were premium offerings, now they are the expected norm in many verticals,” he said. “All parties – the couriers, websites and WMS vendors – will all need to improve their systems to cater for these requirements, or they may be left behind.” Vennemann sees further developments taking place in business process optimisation, to support the ever changing and increasingly
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complex business environment of Vanderlande’s customers. In addition, he believes WMS product development will continue to focus on modular, configurable system solutions, created from standard building blocks. “Vanderlande will continue to develop such solutions,” he said. “For our customers, this means faster implementation, lower costs and best-of-breed solutions.”
Gerrard comments that, increasingly, Voxware is seeing demand for Voice to be integrated with other modes of data collection to maximise worker performance. “This requires software that can easily be used to create Voice and multimodal workflows,” he said. Binder points out that to reduce the level of hardware investment required Zetes sees a trend towards implementing more server driven systems, whereby the role of hardware is more limited than it has been in the past. From topVOX’s perspective, Finken envisages that with its Voice system the entire closed process chain – from order placement and handling in the warehouse site to transportation and delivery – will be accompanied by topSpeech-Lydia.
Double-digit gains According to Adams, Vocollect has a bold vision for the warehouse and distribution centre market. This includes the belief that companies will expand their use of Voice- directed solutions beyond picking to
July 2011
MANUFACTURING &LOGISTICS
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Stanhope observes that complementary functionality is being added to Voice solutions such as barcode scanning, data presentation on screen, and increasingly Voice is being used on a handheld or vehicle mounted terminal. And, like Adams, he foresees a greater move towards the Voice-centric warehouse, with Voice being used not only for picking but also for other disciplines such as goods-in, putaway, picking, replenishment, through to despatch.
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