PTW055: The Voice Directed Warehouse the perfect complement to RFID

1
PTW-055 The Voice Directed Warehouse the
perfect complement to RFID

• Brian Preece
• R D Director
• BCP Ltd

2
Who are BCP?

• Major supplier in Europe of Food Wholesale,
  Retail and Cash and Carry systems
• Users Spar, NAAFI, Pets at Home, BWG, Musgrave,
  ADM, Morrisons, BFG etc
• Area UK and EU
• 1st Extranet - Late 1970s Telspar
• 1st Scanning in convenience stores in UK
• Early adopter of SonicMQ with our AIMS
  wholesale/ retail messaging hub

3
Agenda

• How Voice Direction is transforming warehouse
  operations NOW
• Voice Direction compared and contrasted with RFID
• How Voice Direction will complement RFID
• How Voice Direction works
• Voice Directed Picking live demonstration
• Programming in the Voice Recognition environment
• Interfacing Voice Recognition to OpenEdge 10
  Applications
• Conclusion

4
Agenda

• How Voice Direction is transforming warehouse
  operations NOW
• Voice Direction compared and contrasted with RFID
• How Voice Direction will complement RFID
• How Voice Direction works
• Voice Directed Picking live demonstration
• Programming in the Voice Recognition environment
• Interfacing Voice Recognition to OpenEdge 10
  Applications
• Conclusion

5
Accuracy/ Productivity benefits

• Safety benefits - Hands and eyes free
• Increased accuracy 99.9 plus is not uncommon
• Short pick credit claims and margin lost
• Over pick transport and labour returns costs
• Mispick credit claim, lost margin, write off if
  over shelf life
• 15 increase in productivity
• Speed of work
• No return to office for next pick list
• Faster recording of catch weights

6
Real Time Benefits

• Real time updating of the main system
• Triggered let downs to reduce re-picks
• Include PI in replenishment
• Immediate action on stock errors
• Improved service level
• Reduced time investigating discrepancies

7
Admin Cost Benefits

• Removes the cost of printing and distributing
  picking documents
• Remove cost of re-keying order amendments,
  picking confirmations, and catch weights (1 in 15
  key depressions is an error)
• Ability to change task priorities at a stroke
• Training costs reduced
• Voice is more intuitive than keyboard based
  systems

8
General Benefits

• When all the factors above are considered, a Fast
  Return on Investment can be achieved
• Some figures show a 6 month ROI
• Then year on year savings
• We have pulled this together onto a ROI
  calculator
• See our white paper on ROI
• http//www.bcpsoftware.com/solutions/voice/whitepa
  per.php

9
BCPs experience

• Errors decimated
• In one wholesaler, in the first department Voice
  was implemented, there was only one picking error
  in the last 4 week period an error rate of
  0.0017!
• Training costs decimated
• New pickers can be fully effective within hours
• Productivity improved
• All pickers are now as productive as the best
  pickers used to be

10
Agenda

• How Voice Direction is transforming warehouse
  operations NOW
• Voice Direction compared and contrasted with RFID
• How Voice Direction will complement RFID
• How Voice Direction works
• Voice Directed Picking live demonstration
• Programming in the Voice Recognition environment
• Interfacing Voice Recognition to OpenEdge 10
  Applications
• Conclusion

11
RFID vs. Voice Direction

• RFID
• Emerging technology
• Needs specialist hardware
• Transforms supply chain
• Needs new Progress technology
• Unproven benefits
• Passive technology
• Positive ID of items

• Voice Direction
• Mature technology
• Needs specialist hardware
• Transforms supply chain
• Works with current core Progress technology
• Well established benefits
• Active technology
• Requires operator intervention to ID items

12
Agenda

• How Voice Direction is transforming warehouse
  operations NOW
• Voice Direction compared and contrasted with RFID
• How Voice Direction will complement RFID
• How Voice Direction works
• Voice Directed Picking live demonstration
• Programming in the Voice Recognition environment
• Interfacing Voice Recognition to OpenEdge 10
  Applications
• Conclusion

13
Supply Chain with Voice only

• Picking
• Voice directs picker, picker confirms pick by
  speaking back item ID
• Goods Receiving
• Operator checks goods against ASN and confirms by
  Voice
• Put Away
• Voice directs operator to free locations,
  operator confirms locations by Voice
• Replenishment
• Voice sends operator to bulk stock location, then
  to picking location, operator confirms location
  by voice

14
Supply Chain with RFID/ Voice

• Picking
• Voice directs picker, RFID confirms pick
• Goods Receiving
• RFID reports delivery and compares to ASN
• Put Away
• Voice directs operator to free locations, RFID
  confirms locations
• Replenishment
• Voice sends operator to bulk stock location, then
  to picking location, RFID confirms location by

15
Agenda

• How Voice Direction is transforming warehouse
  operations NOW
• Voice Direction compared and contrasted with RFID
• How Voice Direction will complement RFID
• How Voice Direction works
• Voice Directed Picking live demonstration
• Programming in the Voice Recognition environment
• Interfacing Voice Recognition to OpenEdge 10
  Applications
• Conclusion

16
BCP and Voice Recognition

• BCP have chosen the Vocollect system to provide
  voice hardware
• Uses Talkman Development Environment
• Widely used in the US
• Vocollect formed in 1987
• Based in Pittsburgh, office in UK
• 160 plus employees
• Creators of Talkman Voice Recognition system
• Developers of proprietary Blue Streak speech
  recognition
• 50,000 terminals in use worldwide
• 300 installations
• 85 of Voice-Directed Warehouse market

17
Voice Recognition Technology

• Talkman Unit (T2)
• Rechargeable battery.
• Any spread spectrum RF network.
• Headset
• Scanner
• Waist Mounted Printer
• Rugged, can be used in hostile environments
• Works well in extreme noise conditions

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How does it work?

• Operator wears a specialised Voice Recognition
  computer (VRC)
• Order is loaded into the unit by RF
• VRC directs operator to the warehouse location
  and says how many to pick
• Operator confirms the pick
• Successful pick sent to Warehouse Management
  System by RF
• Stock is updated in real time

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What if the stock is wrong?

• Programming in the workflow app in the VRC
  decides whether to
• Pick an alternative
• Send a short quantity
• Repick later
• And also alerts the Warehouse Management System
  in Real Time to the discrepancy

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Voice Overview

• Speech Recognition
• Enables a voice computer to convert its
  operators speech into text
• Speech Synthesis
• Enables a voice computer to talk to its operator
• RF LAN Technology
• Allows a wearable voice computer to communicate,
  in real time, with remote information systems

21
Speech Recognition

• Transcribing human speech into text is critical
• Attention needs to be paid to the size of the
  vocabulary
• Recognizing a single word from a vocabulary of
  50,000 is much more difficult than from a
  vocabulary of 100
• For warehouse purposes, it must work well with
  highly variable and extreme ambient noise
• In early systems there needed to be a definite
  gap between words. Now speech can be continuous

22
Agenda

• How Voice Direction is transforming warehouse
  operations NOW
• Voice Direction compared and contrasted with RFID
• How Voice Direction will complement RFID
• How Voice Direction works
• Voice Directed Picking live demonstration
• Programming in the Voice Recognition environment
• Interfacing Voice Recognition to OpenEdge 10
  Applications
• Conclusion

23
Demo
24
Agenda

• How Voice Direction is transforming warehouse
  operations NOW
• Voice Direction compared and contrasted with RFID
• How Voice Direction will complement RFID
• How Voice Direction works
• Voice Directed Picking live demonstration
• Programming in the Voice Recognition environment
• Interfacing Voice Recognition to OpenEdge 10
  Applications
• Conclusion

25
Programming the T2

• The T2 can work mostly disconnected
• It has a visual programming environment allowing
  you to program prompts to the operator, what
  responses are acceptable, what the T2 does with
  each response and downloading and uploading of
  data to the warehouse management system

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Here is a sample
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The TaskBuilder lets you

• Say prompts to the operator
• Do calculations
• Store data in variables
• Make decisions based on
• Operator responses
• State of internal variables
• Get data from the server
• Send data to the server
• Wait for a predetermined time

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Getting data from the server

• Look Up Table (LUT)

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Sending data to the server

• Output Data Request (ODR)

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Code View
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Agenda

• How Voice Direction is transforming warehouse
  operations NOW
• Voice Direction compared and contrasted with RFID
• How Voice Direction will complement RFID
• How Voice Direction works
• Voice Directed Picking live demonstration
• Programming in the Voice Recognition environment
• Interfacing Voice Recognition to OpenEdge 10
  Applications
• Conclusion

32
Recommended architecture
At start of a new task
Warehouse Management System
Voice Server
FTP server Voice tasks and Voice profiles
Main applications
Orders, Substitutions, Stock updates, etc.
LUT
Stateless Socket task
Voice interface programs
Application Database
Intermediate database
ODR
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Why another box?

• Technical reasons
• Isolates voice from problems on WMS
• Improved performance
• Simplifies the interface
• Commercial reasons
• Can make the Voice software into a separately
  sellable module

34
Communicating with the T2

• Once a task has begun, the T2 drives the
  communication
• When it requires data, it requests a Look Up
  Table
• When it has data to send, it sends an Output Data
  Request
• Since both LUTs and ODRs can identify the task,
  operator, etc, the Progress socket application
  can be stateless

35
Code View
36
Agenda

• How Voice Direction is transforming warehouse
  operations NOW
• Voice Direction compared and contrasted with RFID
• How Voice Direction will complement RFID
• How Voice Direction works
• Voice Directed Picking live demonstration
• Programming in the Voice Recognition environment
• Interfacing Voice Recognition to OpenEdge 10
  Applications
• Conclusion

37
Conclusions

• Voice recognition offers
• Dramatic increases in productivity accuracy
• Reduction in errors leads to significant cost
  reduction
• Fast Return On Investment
• High level of acceptability with users
• Voice is complementary to RFID
• RFID locates stock, Voice directs the picker
• Can also use Voice as an interim measure while
  RFID matures

38
Questions
39
Thank you for your time!

• brian_at_bcpsoftware.com
• www.bcpsoftware.com
• http//www.vocollect.com