Henderson Group, owner of the Spar, Eurospar, Vivo, and Vivoxtra franchises in Northern Ireland, chose the Zetes 3iVoice solution for its distribution operations.
The group employs over 1,900 people in its wholesale and retail activities. From 230,000 sq feet of warehousing near Belfast, the group distributes 6,000 food lines to supply almost 400 stores.
Zetes is a pan-European systems integrator in the field of Automatic Identification (Auto-ID) for so-called goods identification and people authentication. Its 3iVoice solution, based on the Talkman platform and supporting Vocollect’s Voice Direct applications, uses Talkman T5 voice terminals, headsets and microphones so that operators can verbally exchange stock information with the operating system in real time.
The wearable mobile computers obviate the need for paper lists. Traditional paper-based picking systems are fraught with difficulties for both the efficient management of the warehouse and the safety of workers. Pickers frequently select the wrong item and struggle to consult and update their pick lists whilst loading items onto pallets. Voice-directed systems eliminate these challenges by relaying detailed stock item information to the worker directly from a warehouse management system (WMS) and from the worker back to the system.
A team of Zetes specialists, local and international, worked with Hendersons’ project managers to tailor and implement the voice solution to Hendersons’ requirements.
The first step was the installation of Exceed, an advanced WMS from Infor, enabling Hendersons to minimise stockholding. With the WMS ready for deployment with voice technology, it was decided to voice-enable the picking processes of grocery products.
Henderson Group’s logistics director, Pat McGarry, said, “We could see many business benefits in the transformation of our manual paper-based picking system into a streamlined voice-operated one.”
Henderson’s logistics manager, Philip Mehaffey, added “We chose to work with Zetes because they were uniquely positioned to offer us global integrator experience with local support from their two offices in Ireland.”
The impact of voice has been dramatic. Hendersons’ logistics system manager, Alan Abraham, said, “We have reduced our reported error rate from 0,25% to just 0.01%, equating to a saving of £40,000 in four months from reduced returns.”
He said warehouse production has improved by 5%, and savings have been made on training. New recruits to the distribution centre typically required 13 weeks to become competent stock pickers. The voice system has cut this between four and six weeks.
The acceptance of the new system by warehouse workers was also positive, Mehaffey said. “We have a diverse international team, with many dialects and accents, and were afraid some people’s performance – and consequently their motivation – could be affected using voice technology. Thanks to the customisable voice recognition, this was not an issue.”
Mehaffey concluded, “This has made us look differently at how we organise things, resulting in an almost paperless but highly efficient processes.”
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