Easy Pickings

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aintaining a healthy bottom line is a continuous improvement process within any enterprise.While companies in every industry strive to deliver superior-quality products and services to

their customers,they also face ever-increasing costs of opera-tions.Many organizations are finding significant cost-savings benefits in their picking operations—whether in the ware-house,in the distribution center,or on the manufacturing floor—by using pick-to-light or pick-to-voice technologies.Although opinions vary on the popularity of one technolo-gy over the other,those same opinions concur that each tech-nology offers companies real savings in labor and operations,while delivering higher throughputs with impressive accuracy rates.These technologies are gaining acceptance as standard business tools that can have a real impact on that bottom line.

Can you hear me now?

V OICE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY first appeared

on the scene about 10 years ago,but failed miserably because the technology to support it was not up to par,says Patrick Sedlak,vice president of Sedlak Consultants of Richfield,Ohio.“About three years ago,this technology had a resurgence in the distribution marketplace and it continues to gain trac-tion when it is applied in the right applications,”Sedlak says.While some in the industry claim that voice-directed pick-ing technology can be applied in just about any environment,most agree there are particular environments where voice works best.“The major benefit of pick-to-voice technology is it allows you to work hands-free,but beyond that I have yet to be convinced that it can enhance a picking operation faster and more accurately than a lighted operation,”says Allen Kaiden,president of Sigman/Kaiden Consultants,Inc.of Hauppauge,NY,adding his firm has found voice technology to be less accu-rate and not as fast as pick-to-light technology.The exception,he says,is in receiving applications,where working hands-free

B Y A P R I L T E R R E R I

Easy

Pick-to-light or pick-to-voice? Each offers significant

cost-cutting

opportunities.

Pick-to-light systems work well when a lot of stockkeeping units must be picked.The Professional Control Corp.(PCC) light system shown here is used for picking replacement parts at a power tool manufacturing company.

facilitates picking up and placing cartons.Says Jeffrey Mueller, vice president at Sedlak,“An excellent application for voice is in a quality-control area such as receiving or returns,where the product is being handled and the worker can go through a qualitative series of questions and answers and where the worker has to refer to the condition of the product and the paperwork associated with it.

“We’ve seen voice play well in grocery-type applications as well as other environments where there is full-case picking,low volume,and not a lot of picking taking place,or where pickers must handle large or clumsy items and need both hands to handle the product,”says Mueller.

Vocollect,Inc.,of Pittsburgh is a major player in wearable computers using speech-recognition technology for warehous-ing and industrial applications.The company’s initial business segment has been the retail and wholesale grocery industry.“We are rapidly expanding into new warehousing and distrib-ution supply chain market segments and into new applications beyond picking,”says Tim Eusterman,Vocollect’s vice presi-dent of marketing and business development.Other industries using Vocollect pick-to-voice technology include mass mer-chandisers,food service companies,pharmaceutical,and med-ical supply companies.

Eusterman notes that hidden potential is another reason to choose voice.“Many companies we work with may be at 99.4 percent accuracy levels and they want to do better,”he says.“Going from 99.4 percent to 99.9 percent is significant.So, although companies out there are really doing a great job when it comes to accuracy,there is that last bit of potential they can unlock with voice technology.”

T emple University’s Richard Lancioni,Ph.D.,and profes-sor and chair of marketing and logistics,notes several advan-tages offered by voice technology—mainly worker mobility and immediate communication between the picker and the system.“You can make corrections to an order on the fly; when someone orders on the Internet and then deletes or adds

an item,the worker can make those changes

quickly,”he says.

Rugged environments

V OCOLLECT’S T ALKMAN pick-to-voice technology is an application that interfaces with a

warehouse management system (WMS),which

assembles https://www.360docs.net/doc/745708426.html,ing speech recognition tech-

nology,data for a particular order are translated

into verbal commands directed to the picker.“A

picker is directed to a slot location in the ware-

house,then given a verbal command on what to

pick,”explains Eusterman.“Pickers respond,let-

ting the system know they are in the right slot

location and have selected the correct item.”

The Talkman solution uses a radio frequency (RF) network and includes a wearable and wire-

less Windows CE-based terminal and a specialized headset with a microphone.Both are designed for rugged ware-house https://www.360docs.net/doc/745708426.html,ing V ocollect’s Blue Streak technology, Talkman filters out interfering noises in the environment.

Oakland,Calif.-based Edy’s Grand Ice Cream needed a reliable solution for picking in a harsh environment where temperatures are a steady minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit.That kind of cold is tough on the pickers as well as the equipment. Fritz Reitemeier,regional operations manager for Edy’s,says,“It’s difficult to work with gloves in a cold environment like this and check off on a piece of paper what you’ve just picked. It’s also hard on equipment with liquid crystal displays (LCDs).We chose Vocollect’s Talkman because of the per-ceived opportunity to improve our order accuracy within the harsh environment.”

Edy’s also required a system delivering a precise history of every picking transaction in order to facilitate truck-loading sequencing.“I have to make sure truck loading and sequencing is correct,”Reitemeier explains.

The facility serves two cross docks and another 15 depots where products are transferred to delivery trailers.Orders from At-a-Glance

s Voice picking and pick-to-light technology both offer greater

accuracy and productivity,but each must be evaluated in

light of the requirements of the picking environment.

s Harsh,rugged environments and environments containing

items that are large and hard to handle are ideal

applications for voice technology,as it leaves the picker’s

hands free to perform other tasks.

s Pick-to-light solutions excel in high-production,high-speed

environments in which the picker must pick large numbers

of stock-keeping units (SKUs).

The Vocollect Talkman computer terminal,worn by the picker on a belt around the waist,receives picking directions via radio frequency network from the warehouse management system.The terminal decodes and translates the data into speech,providing instructions to the picker via the headset.

and picking groups are sequenced so pickers can pick in directed by lights, her way.

of processing.

slightly different components.“In a standalone application, the operator can scan a bar code on the product and that will identify to our controller which parts need to be selected for that particular assembly,”explains Bitely.If an operator attempts to pick the wrong part for a particular model assem-bly,an alarm (activated by infrared sensors) will sound to alert the operator of the mistake.

Bitely cites an air conditioner manufacturer,whose numer-ous models use one of27 different orifices.“Y ou can’t tell the difference,with your naked eye,between these orifices.But if they wind up in the field with the wrong one,the air condi-tioners are not operational,and these are products costing sev-eral thousand dollars,”he says.

Sauer-Danfoss is a manufacturer of engineered hydraulic and electronic systems for mobile equipment.The company uses a pick-to-light system on the manufacturing floor.“Quality was the issue that drove us to choose our pick-to-light system,”says Al Carlson,process engineer for the Ames, Iowa,company.

The SpeasTech system gives Sauer-Danfoss numerous improvements over the light system developed by the compa-ny some years back.Sauer-Danfoss also implemented its own procedural improvements to the new pick-to-light operation.“We reduced DPMs (defects per million) by about five times over what they were several years ago.Zero DPMs is our ulti-mate goal,”says Carlson.

With an offering of nine different products,with thousands of possible configurations based on those nine products,pick-ers get a lot of help from the pick-to-light system.“It was easy to pick the wrong component for a particular model,with all of those possibilities,”Carlson says.

Work orders are processed through the company’s Oracle database,which creates bills of material (BOMs) associated with a particular pallet and serial number.The manufacturing execution system (MES) delivers information describing which parts are required for a particular model.Lights appear at work stations receiving the assembly,and pickers pick the required parts from bins associated with the particular prod-uct being assembled.“Bin lights are not turned on at the next work station until all the picks have been completed at the pre-vious work station,”notes Carlson.

Lancioni of T emple University notes pick-to-light technol-ogy can deliver more than just pick information.“Some com-panies are using light to communicate more than just location of an item,and they incorporate the use of different colored lights to indicate inventory levels,”he says.For example,a yel-