Voice Picking

With labour costs making up over half of warehouse overheads, alternative picking methods
are being improved on. One solution is voice picking.

Voice picking is shown to speed up workers by 20% compared to a paper counterpart, reaching
99.98% accuracy. [redshift research] It has also shown to reduce high staff turnover due
to an increase in productivity without an increase in stress.

How does it work?

VP works to reduce mistakes by using a two way system. The picker wears a headset and
terminal which is trained to their voice, enabling them to receive orders/locations, and
then confirm them on arrival at the picking station. If an error occurs, mistakes are subject
to immediate correction, minimalising mistakes.

Staff incentives

These devices not only ease the picking process, but they can also tally the amount of
picks a worker processes in their shift – which some employers may choose to reward. Rewards
systems often result in higher staff motivation, meaning higher levels of productivity.

These devices take around 2 days to train up with, meaning “we are now able to hire new
selectors and get them up and running in no time. It also gives us much more flexibility
in terms of hiring seasonal help” – Paul J. Agamanta, IT director at Suisan.

To summarise, the advantages:

– Higher picking accuracy
– Lower staff turnover
– Higher morale, lower stress
– Allows staff to carry out
different tasks throughout the day
– Cut costs
– Faster order production