Voice Picking for Warehouse Management Systems

Today's supply chain managers live by the following creed: more automation in the warehouse equals more productivity in the warehouse.  With 21st-century warehouse management systems offering such features as "pay for productivity" models, long gone are the days of simple paper product picking.  Even product picking by barcode scanner is slowly becoming outdated.

In today's fast-paced, data centric warehouses, operations managers rely on real-time pick, place, and put metrics for timely forecasting, replenishment, etc.  A key component to real-time data acquisition with respect to inventory moves is voice picking.

Voice picking is a method of moving inventory using a voice-enabled mobile computer.  An operator is guided through a document pick sequence by text-to-speech technology.  For example, a worker wearing a headset can be directed to, "pick seven cases of product ABC."  Then, after moving the inventory from the staging area to the appropriate pick belt or conveyor, the worker acknowledges that the task has been completed by speaking into the headset microphone, "got it."  Once the acknowledgment has been made, the backend database is updated in real-time to show that the cases were moved.

Voice picking is a warehouse automation tool that dramatically increases the productivity of warehouse workers.  Productivity increases higher than 40% are not unusual.  In addition, increases in accuracy (to 99%) and error rates approaching zero are the norm.  These facts are made evident by multitudes of return on investment findings from early adopters of the technology, especially in the food and beverage and consumer packaged goods industries.  ROI for voice picking applications is measured in months, not years.

The cost for adding voice picking applications to your warehouse management system runs approximately $10,000 (2007) per operator in warehouses employing less than 20 voice pickers per shift and that number gradually decreases as the number of voice pickers increases.  These costs can be reduced if you leverage the mobile device assets that you already own which are being used for other tasks in the warehouse.