Voice Technology Beyond Voice Picking
Speech-based warehousing is being more widely used than ever before. Available since the early 1990s for industrial use, voice technology has advanced rapidly. Early implementations were long arduous processes of trial and error style fine-tuning of underpowered, oversized hardware and mediocre recognition and synthesis engines.
By contrast, speech-enabling a warehouse is a turn-key practice across industries today. Thanks to the increased speed and memory capacity of mobile devices, more complex algorithms are being employed delivering near perfect accuracy for speech recognition in almost any environment. Voice systems have gone from using bulky computers and headsets that were difficult to configure and maintain to simple, lightweight, mobile systems.
Voice picking was once the preferred supply chain execution process to be speech-enabled. In voice picking, the speech synthesizer reads a location, product and quantity to the operator who moves the requested inventory to a conveyer belt and acknowledges the move by responding to the voice recognition software through the headset microphone. Speech recognition and speech synthesis have now moved beyond the simple pick process and can be found in other areas such as taking inventory, cycle counting, cross-docking, bulk moves, put away, maintenance and more.
Mobile devices capable of multimodal (multi-function) operation allow warehouse managers to add speech anywhere in the warehouse or stockyard where hands free and eyes free operation are required. Implementing voice technology beyond picking is delivering a quick return on investment, ROI, as voice technology implemented beyond picking has increased productivity as high as 40% in some functions.
Historically, speech recognition has been impossible to implement on a fork-lift, for example, because drivers typically cannot be tethered to the system with a wired headset. Within the last twelve months, Bluetooth technology embedded in wireless headsets has progressed in quality such that adding speech capability to fork-lift operations is viable. In addition, expensive proprietary equipment is not necessary as off-the-shelf hardware and software can be used to speech-enable the fork-lift and any other warehouse function.
The toughest task in voice technology is in the recognition. When considering voice technology for your logistics activities, be sure to engage consultants with significant experience in recognition systems and in leveraging your existing mobile assets in lieu of offering additional proprietary voice devices. Additionally, ensure that your voice vendor demonstrates the quality and accuracy of their voice system on the mobile device that you choose. In doing so, you will be successful in implementing voice technology beyond voice picking.
