Hands off: Is voice picking the answer?

There was a time when seeing someone who was seemingly talking to no one in public would cause you to cross the street. You worried about those little voices inside their heads were saying.

Then came hands-free calling and the Bluetooth technology got smaller and smaller. So, suddenly, those people having public conversations with themselves became more culturally acceptable.

Now, you’ve got voice picking. It’s not new but it’s evolving into an essential tool for asset management. Your warehouse staff gets their directions from a computer-controlled voice through a headset. The “little voices” are telling them the item numbers and descriptions, and even where to locate the inventory in the facility. Gone are the cumbersome manual systems where labels are lost and your employees spend as much time walking back and forth to a printing station to regenerate paperwork as they do shipping out your orders.

I’ve spoken with many warehouse managers who switched to voice picking after dealing with too many human errors, mishaps, and wasted time. The result? The accuracy increases ten-fold (and sometimes more) and productivity soars. In fact, most people I spoke with said they saw an ROI in less than a year. Depending on the volume of a distribution center, this time frame could be even sooner.

Sometimes, you’ve got to listen to the little voice in your head. In the case of voice picking, that’s probably the sound of profitability.