BY VICTORIA KICKHAM, SENIOR EDITOR
PICKING TECHNOLOGIES
Technology
INNOVATION IS RESHAPING THE PICKING-TECH-nologies landscape as tech providers seek to meet customers’ growing need to increase productivity and throughput
in their distribution centers. Driven by a shift in fulfillment
trends toward smaller orders and increased piece-picking,
suppliers are serving up a host of innovative solutions
that can make workers more efficient and push
organizations farther down the road toward
automation. Industry experts say smarter,
more intuitive voice technology; wearable
products that streamline manual picking;
and advanced robotics that speed up the
sorting process in piece-picking operations
are just a few of the newest advancements
helping DCs meet those goals.
Process improvement is at the heart of
the issue and the key driver of today’s more
advanced technologies, according to Scott
Deutsch, Americas president for
supply chain execution and
voice software solutions provider Ehrhardt Partner Group
(EPG). Deutsch says cost
reduction used to be the primary reason for investing in pro-ductivity-enhancing voice-picking
technologies in particular. Today,
he says, organizations are focused on
streamlining operations to manage
the growing complexity of the picking
process—while also getting orders out the
door faster and more accurately.
“If you think about it, 10 years ago a lot of
companies would [just] ship cases to their local
retail location,” Deutsch explains. “Today, busi-
nesses fulfill orders from the warehouse as well
as the retail store. Customers can place orders
wherever and however they want, and they can
pick them up at the store or have them deliv-
ered to their home. [As a result,] if companies are [process-
ing] 150 orders a day, they want to know how they get to
180 a day. Today, that is the big driver.”
GIVING NEW VOICE TO PICKING
Modern voice solutions can increase employee productiv-
ity by more than 10 percent, according to EPG, which
offers its Lydia Voice solution for warehouse and
logistics operations. This is due in part to tech-
nological advances such as smarter voice-rec-
ognition technology, which is one of the
biggest changes the voice segment
has experienced in the past 10 years,
Deutsch says. Advanced voice soft-
ware solutions now use deep neu-
ral networks—the same kind Apple
and Amazon use to power virtual
assistants like Siri and Alexa—that
can provide a more than 25-percent
increase in voice-recognition accuracy,
he adds. This is vital for use in noisy
warehouses, where near perfection
is required to ensure that the right
products are picked, packed, and
shipped consistently, he says.
Deutsch adds that today’s more
advanced technology also elimi-
nates the need for voice template
training, in which each employee
would typically spend 30 to 40
minutes training the system to rec-
ognize his or her voice in order for it
to work effectively. In addition to rais-
ing productivity levels, this advancement
allows for greater buy-in at warehouses
and DCs, where employment levels often
fluctuate due to high turnover and strong
seasonal demand for labor.
“[Extensive training] would be accept-
Picking up the pace
Innovations in voice, wearable, and robotic picking technologies
are helping companies boost productivity in the distribution center
through faster, more accurate piece-picking operations.
