technologyreview
BY DAVID MALONEY, SENIOR EDITOR
When the international nutritional solu- tions and cheese group Glanbia converted over to voice for its Irish dairy business, it didn’t stop with picking. It found ways to use the technology in virtually every part of its distribution operation. Milking the system
WHEN IT COMES TO DISTRIBUTION APPLIcations for voice technology, people tend to
assume the story begins and ends with order
picking. That’s no surprise given the kinds of
productivity and accuracy gains voice users
have reported over the decades.
But it turns out picking is just part of the story.
As a number of users have discovered, voice technology can bring the same types of advantages to
other DC processes, such as receiving, putaway,
replenishment, load building, cycle counting,
inventory management, and shipping. In fact,
voice can be used to streamline nearly every aspect of distribution center management.
Glanbia, an international provider of milk, cheese, dairy foods, and nutritional products, is a case
in point. For nearly three years now, the company, which is headquartered in Kilkenney, Ireland, has
been using voice technology to direct not just picking operations, but also activities like receiving,
putaway, and loading at its Irish dairy facilities.
What started Glanbia down this road was its growing frustration with the manual processes it was
using at the time. “We were solely a paper-based operation,” explains John Mee, the company’s sup-
ply chain manager. “Replenishment, for instance, was all manual. A person had to follow directions
on paper and look for a replenishment slot.”
Trouble was, that was proving to be both time consuming and error prone. It wasn’t unusual for
papers to be misplaced or products to be put in the wrong places. “Our labor costs were high, but we
were getting these high errors and less-than-optimal productivity rates,” Mee says. “We knew we were
