Voice, Scan, Screen and RFID: A Marriage of Convenience

Over the past five years there’s been a shift to the use of voice-directed warehouse applications running on standard RF terminals rather than voice-only hardware devices. The use of so-called multi-modal terminals opens the opportunity to combine voice with other modes of communication and data capture to enhance efficiency, accuracy and ease of use.

This also creates a more nuanced process optimization challenge. Rather than using voice direction and voice recognition at every step in a process, you now need to consider when scanning might add efficiency or accuracy to a voice-directed process, or where users could benefit from receiving information via a screen instead of voice.

Voice Goes Multi-Modal

Six years ago all voice-directed picking and other warehouse applications were delivered on voice-only hardware terminals that combined voice-directed work with speech recognition. In those days, voice- and RF-based applications were seen as mutually exclusive, with voice positioned as a replacement for bar code scanning. However, voice and scanning are complementary technologies. In fact, voice and scanning have been combined as far back as the 1990s, well before the introduction of multi-modal RF terminals supporting voice.

For example, for the past decade a major apparel retailer has been using a Jennifer voice directed put-to-store application using voice-only terminals along with external scanners. In this application the external scanner is used to capture SKU numbers on cartons of product prior to putting. Today this put-to-store application can now be run on a standard RF terminal and use the terminal’s built-in scanner, saving the expense of purchasing an external scanner.

The rapid adoption of multi-modal terminals for voice makes it easier and more cost-effective to combine voice, scanning and other technologies in new ways. The difficulty now is figuring out when it is best to use voice, when to scan, and when to use a terminal screen.

Voice plus Scan

In the apparel application above, the user scans the bar code on a carton to identify the product and initiate a put-to-store task. The voice system then tells the user how many items to take from the box and put into each tote for different stores. In a voice-only world, the user could speak the item or SKU number, but scanning is faster than speaking in this case. And since scanning in this example is used to initiate the put-to-store task, there is no time penalty for handling a scanner at that point in the process.

Another example of a pre-pick process that is well-suited to scanning is cart set-up in a batch picking situation (i.e., where multiple customer orders are picked to separate totes or cartons on a cart). Using voice-direction and bar code scanning, the user can scan the bar code on each tote or carton as they place it on the picking cart, in effect telling the WMS which carton ID is associated with which customer order in the picking assignment. The voice-plus-scan approach to cart set up is much faster than either a voice-only or scan-only process, making this a great example of how voice and scanning together are better than either one individually.

What these two voice-plus-scan examples have in common is that scanning is used to initiate the pick or put task. Since the users are not yet grabbing items there is no productivity or accuracy penalty to handling the RF device. And as noted in the cart set up example, scanning is faster than voice data entry in that process.

To Scan or Not To Scan

What about scanning shelf labels or items within a pick, put, or other task? In almost every case, scanning within the pick (or other) transaction will be slower than speaking a check digit. This is true even if the user has a finger-mounted ring scanner. With voice, the user will speak a shelf-mounted check string while approaching the slot and reaching for the product without stopping. With scanning, the user must stop, aim and scan before reaching for the items, even when using a ring scanner. The time penalty for using a ring scanner is small, but in high volume pick operations every extra second per transaction adds up to significant man-hours over days, weeks and months. And scanning a shelf label is no more accurate than speaking a check digit.

On the other hand, for customers who need to capture serial data at the point of pick, bar code scanning may be a better alternative than voice. For example, it is faster to scan a serial number than to speak 8-12 digits. Likewise, there are a growing number of situations in which users may need to capture additional variable data at the point of pick, everything from lot numbers, date codes, case weights, etc. Depending on the frequency and type of data capture required, ring scanners are the ideal complement to voice. (To see an example of how voice and scanning are combined for both cart set up and serial data capture, see the RSR Group voice picking video available at www.lucasware.com/successes.)

Whether voice or scanning is better in a given DC or process depends on a number of factors, including the availability of bar codes, the ergonomics of scanning (the ease of scanning with a ring scanner or with the built-in RF device scanner), the specific data capture needs, and other details of the process.