Watching from the sidelines is a third
camp made up of vendors who remain
agnostic about the hardware platforms
that support these applications. Michael
Womeldorph, senior product manager for
voice at Intelligrated Software, echoes the
commonly heard concerns about consumer hardware’s ruggedness and battery life.
Most consumer devices aren’t designed to
stand up to the rugged warehouse environment or run for lengthy work shifts,
he says. It should be noted, however, that
vendors of systems that run on smartphones have responded to those concerns
by encasing their devices in tough, mil-itary-spec protective covers or attaching
extra power packs to extend battery life.
Customers are also inquiring about
building voice applications on consumer devices like smart watches, although
few users have actually deployed them,
Womeldorph said. His company is open to
such requests, he added.
“We are device agnostic; we will go where
our customers want to go,” Womeldorph
said. “Many times, we are leveraging
whatever platform they may already be
using, like mobile computers from Zebra
or Honeywell, or voice-only devices from
Spectralink or Cisco.”
Typically, a systems integrator will work
with those components, adding a ring
scanner or wireless Bluetooth headset for
further functionality. “We don’t want to
lock customers into a certain platform;
what we’re looking for is simply a telepho-
ny platform, whether that’s on a phone or
a computer,” Womeldorph said.
VOICE EXPANDS ITS RANGE
Thanks to the wide array of platform
options and to its improved reliabil-
ity, voice technology is spreading far
beyond its original applications in
order picking. Industry analysts say
users are now applying voice tech-
nology to a broad range of ware-
house tasks. “The benefits of voice
apply to all the workflows within the
DC,” Lucas’s Kubera said. “Picking
is the low-hanging fruit, but we’re
also seeing it used for consolidation,
loading, receiving, replenishment,
and cycle counting.”
“It started with picking, but now
voice is also used for replenishment,
inventory, and packaging,” adds
Chris Heslop, global director for
workflow solutions at Honeywell
Sensing & Productivity Solutions.
“In the classic application, the head-
set would just say ‘Go to aisle 7, slot
4, pick 3.’ Now, you find voice in
other applications in the DC,” like
fleet maintenance and inspection.
In addition to finding new applications in warehouse operations,
voice-directed technology is also
paying off through business analytics, Heslop said. A voice application
can capture data from every interaction in the DC, send the data to
a cloud-based server, and generate
reports for managers. Supervisors
can examine those numbers to
identify the causes of unnecessary
delays, track certain shifts or workers, and generate predictive analytics that forecast shortages and
delays before they occur.
As voice technology and consumer hardware continue to converge
toward a potential shared future in
supply chain applications, reluctant vendors could eventually drop
their objections and come around
to meet that demand. In the end,
the old saying may still apply—the
customer is always right.
