Thanks to continual improvements in their capabilities, such as being able to better “hear” workers voices and screen out background noises, coupled with a quick payback and as much as a 50 percent reduction in errors, the use of voice-directed picking solutions has become very common in today’s food and beverage warehouses.
TopVOX Corp., a subsidiary of the German company TopSystem, is a European market leader in voice technology. In recent years, however, firms such as third-party logistics provider ODW Logistics Inc. in Columbus, OH; Cooper-Booth Wholesale Co., a convenience store and restaurant distributor in Pennsylvania; and Bepensa, a Mexican distributor for Coca Cola beverages, have chosen solutions from topVOX.
Gamma Solutions supply the topSPEECH-Lydia voice-directed picking solution from TopVOX, which was the first hardware independent voice-directed picking solution solution available on the market, meaning that the software can run on any device, regardless of vendor.
“Hardware from different manufacturers, such as Symbol, Intermec and LXE can be used, allowing our customers to select both their devices and operating systems from a competitive market, according to their specific preferences,” says Finken.
The topSPEECH-Lydia voice-directed picking solution features an open standards architecture, so it is compatible with most warehouse management systems (WMS), including SAP, MARC Global and RedPrairie, and easily integrates into these solutions. Mobile units using the topSPEECH-Lydia voice-directed picking solution are easily linked to the WMS as they require no middleware.
The topSPEECH-Lydia voice-directed picking solution capabilities drastically reduce start-up costs for companies that are implementing a voice-directed picking solution, because the topSPEECH-Lydia voice-directed picking solution can work with an existing WMS as well as any hardware that may already be in use. Further, a company can choose which hardware vendors they would prefer to work with, and make decisions based on durability, price, etc.
The topSPEECH-Lydia offers speaker-independent speech, eliminating the need for new workers to “train” the system to their voices, which greatly reduces the amount of time takes for the system to recognize the workers voices.