rect location and quantity, a high degree of accuracy is maintained.
Along with improving accuracy, the voice system has greatly
simplified the picking process, Taylor says. For instance, under the
old paper picking system, when workers went to pick wines, they
had to match up the name on the bottle’s label with the name on
the paper list to make certain they had pulled the right item. “Now,
the workers can just focus on the slots and quantities,” she says.
The net result has been a major boost in productivity at
Odom’s DCs. Almost immediately after the voice system was
installed, picking productivity jumped by nearly 50 percent.
“Voice has been amazing for us,” Taylor says.
Multimodal moves
At the same time that Odom installed the voice system for order
picking, it also invested in equipment to automate some of its
other DC tasks, including receiving, replenishment, and cycle
counting. For those operations, the company chose Intermec
CV30 terminals connected to SR61ex Bluetooth scanners.
Although that proved to be a workable solution, it also meant
that in order to make full use of its WMS’s capabilities, Odom
had to invest in three separate devices—a computer terminal, a
scanner, and a voice terminal.
Last year, things got quite a bit simpler when Odom upgraded
to Intermec’s newly introduced CK3 mobile computer. This multimodal device allows workers to use the same unit for voice picking, scanning, and screen-based tasks. Today, Odom workers use
the CK3 during the day shift for receiving, putaway, and replenishment. At night, the unit is placed into a holster and connected
to a headset, and the terminal is ready for voice-based picking.
Among other advantages, the multimodal device gives the DCs
more flexibility in managing their operations, Taylor says. For
instance, if a facility receives a rush order that cannot wait until the
normal nighttime picking cycle, it’s a simple matter to convert a
CK3 unit from, say, cycle counting mode into a picking terminal.
In addition to providing flexibility, the multimodal unit has
shortened the learning curve for workers, Taylor says. Instead of
having to learn to use three separate pieces of equipment, they
only have to be trained on one device. She adds that the new terminal has also simplified many tasks. For example, in the past, a
lift truck driver might have to get down off the vehicle to scan a
product, then jump back onto the forklift to view the screen. Now,
he can simply look at the screen on the multimodal computer.
On top of that, replacing three separate devices with a single
multimodal terminal has saved the company some serious
money. Odom estimates that the move has slashed its equipment
expenditures by about 75 percent.
“The cost decrease was really the home run for us,” Taylor says.
“It was a very practical decision to go multimodal.”
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