technologyreview
BY DAVID MALONEY, SENIOR EDITOR
The Container Store
Late last year, The
turns up the sound
Container Store
pulled the plug
on its old RF picking
system and switched
over to voice. The
result? A 10-percent
productivity gain.
AS ITS NAME IMPLIES, THE CONtainer Store sells, well, containers. And
lots of them. Since its founding in 1978,
the company has grown into the nation’s
largest retailer of home organization and
storage systems, with its 57th store opening in Westbury, N. Y., this month. It supplies all of those stores from an 835,000-
square-foot distribution center in the
company’s hometown of Coppell, Texas.
Dealing with the retailer’s wide array of
containers—some of them quite size-
able—has sometimes proved challenging
for the facility’s order pickers. That was
particularly true under the old radio fre-
quency-based order fulfillment system,
which often required pickers to juggle
scanners and unwieldy items. Last year,
those challenges prompted management
to switch to voice technology. The voice
system is hands-free, which allows pickers
to select needed items unencumbered by
paper lists or scanning devices.
