How Can My Company Streamline Voice Picking Technology?
Voice picking solutions offer warehouses several benefits, such as:
Improved accuracy: Picking accuracy can increase by up to 85 percent, leading to fewer returns and happier customers.
Shorter learning curve: Because voice picking uses conversational language, workers don’t need to learn cumbersome paper-based operations or data entry methods. With voice picking, warehouse personnel spend less time learning processes and systems and more time being productive.
Improved safety: Fewer distractions lead to a safer warehouse. Workers can better focus on their environment to avoid bad situations.
Increased productivity: Because workers have fewer distractions, less movement, no paperwork to fuss over and no device to input data, productivity can increase up to 35 percent. Automating the picking process by combining voice-directed work commands with hands-free scanning can increase picking productivity up to 50 percent. This increased efficiency should translate into a faster work pace and higher hourly pick rates.
Employee satisfaction: Productive employees are happy employees. Workers love the simplified process and lack of friction.
Optimizing Voice Picking Solutions with DecisionPoint
Speakeasy is an advanced voice picking system developed by Wavelink, a leading provider of multi-vendor mobile device management solutions, wireless infrastructure management solutions, voice and mobile application development software, and popular terminal emulation software.
Speakeasy is 100 percent installed on mobile devices and is designed to work in your environment without infrastructure additions or modifications. Speakeasy requires no costly or complex service integrations. It sits on top of your existing terminal emulation or web app, and works with any WMS.
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The Rise of Voice Picking Solutions in 2020
Warehouses are under increasing pressure to deliver more with less. Speed and accuracy are high on the list of customer expectations. But using yesterday’s technologies to meet today’s demands may not provide the competitive edge needed to remain profitable.
Voice picking solutions provide warehouse managers with a new way to automate cumbersome picking processes to remove friction and dramatically increase efficiency and accuracy.
What is Voice Picking Technology?
Voice picking solutions takes warehouse efficiency to a new level to further streamline operations and improve worker productivity. Also known as voice-directed warehousing (VDW), pick by voice and speech-based picking, voice picking is a paperless, hands-free and eyes-free way to direct workers to picking locations and provide picking instructions.
Warehouse personnel work totally hands free with their eyes focused on their work. There’s no wasted motion handling devices, hitting buttons, looking at screens, referring to paper or other tasks that would otherwise distract them from picking.
Picking instructions are sourced from your WDS or ERP system. Instructions are automatically recorded and sequenced, and then delivered to workers’ ruggedized smart devices over RFID or WiFi. The voice prompts direct workers in clear everyday language.
Workers typically wear a headset to hear the instructions and speak back. The voice system verbally directs your warehouse personnel to a picking location, verifies the worker’s location at arrival, and then provides the picking instructions. When completed, the system directs your worker to the next location. The voice picking system optimizes the picking path for efficiency. Because workers verify their location as they move, they don’t need to slow down to input data. So there’s no lag time between between tasks. Everything keeps moving.
As workers complete tasks, the voice picking systems sends updates in real time back to the host.
Voice picking solutions are good for warehouses with a large number of SKUs and a low number of reaches to pick.
With more than 30 years’ experience helping warehouses improve operations and profits through technology, DecisionPoint can help you find the voice picking solution that’s right for your business needs. Get the most out of your wireless ecosystem with a Wavelink voice picking system designed and implemented by DecisionPoint.
Learn more about how DecisionPoint and Wavelink can improve efficiency and profits.
