4 paths to voice systems evolution

As distribution centers struggle with labor-intensive e-commerce fulfillment and difficulty finding enough workers, making order picking as efficient as possible is high priority. No wonder “voice” solutions that direct warehouse associates through fast and accurate tasks are growing.

With voice-directed solutions, order selectors can work largely hands free allowing them to focus on picking or other tasks. The voice instructions may also feature confirmation steps to increase accuracy. These traditional voice benefits have fueled a growing market. Globally, voice solutions are set to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15% through 2025, according to KBV Research.

However, the value proposition in today’s voice market goes well beyond order picking, or even voice, say vendors. For one, multiple types of wearables are being used to create a market that’s more about multi-modal work automation than pure voice. Over the last several years, vendors have upped their game around analytics and other solutions that also help managers get the most from the workforce. Here four ways voice solutions are evolving to help operations become more efficient.

1. Multi-mode interactions

The traditional voice headset, tethered to a small device on a belt, has been replaced by a wider variety of wearables, as well as advancements in headset technology, including wireless Bluetooth headsets. Device options today span smart phones, ring scanners, smart glasses with augmented reality (AR) capability, or wearable vests with voice hardware built in. Vendors vary in the type of wearables they support, but overall, vendors now support multiple device types, often running on Android.

“Everyone still refers to this market as voice solutions, but if you walked into one of our customers’ facilities and observed how they use our application, you’d figure out pretty quickly that voice is just one component of the solution, and in some cases, a relatively small component of the overall solution because they may be using ring scanners, vision for data capture, or AR,” says Keith Phillips, president and CEO of Voxware.

Devices for voice used to be small, purpose-built units attached on a belt, with a wired headset. This has evolved with the broad acceptance of Bluetooth headsets and ring scanners. The wearable scanners allow for quick item scanning for purposes like serial tracking. Some voice vendors also support the use of smart glasses, using the microphone/speaker in glasses to facilitate voice interactions and the glass to convey information visually.

Another hardware evolution has been the embrace of Android by major providers of rugged mobile devices. Vendors today offer a variety of Android devices, with extra device security and management features added. Some device vendors such as Zebra Technologies have created a common environment for Android functions that voice vendors can use to test and certify their solutions on multiple devices, says Scott Deutsch, North American president of Ehrhardt + Partner Solutions.

These platforms make voice solutions more attractive for end user organizations, says Deutsch, because vendors can quickly certify many Android devices with less effort. In addition to being able to serve as voice devices, Android mobile devices also offer capabilities like touchscreens, push to talk or smart phone features that make them attractive for use with warehouse management system (WMS) software or other solutions.

A Voxware customer reviews graphical data in an analytics dashboard.

While smart glasses garner much attention, Deutsch sees the rapid uptake of Android as having greater impact on the voice market. “The explosion of rugged Android devices by trusted device vendors has dramatically changed the perspective of customers on what their device choices are,” says Deutsch. “There is a lot more freedom of choice today.”

2. More than picking

Sure, picking each-level orders from forward pick areas is voice’s bread and butter, but vendors report many users are now using their solutions for workflows such as cycle counting, replenishment or receiving and put away.

With today’s tight cycle time pressures, it’s important to speed up multiple workflows, not just final pick areas, says Phillips. “Distribution center managers have really had to focus on the overall speed of their operations, and how they’ve architected their processes,” he says. “Every customer we’ve deployed over the last four years has ended up implementing multiple workflows.”

Improved ease of integration between voice solutions and WMS is seen as a key enabler of being able to cost effectively deploy added workflows. Using application programming interfaces (APIs) such as REST APIs, voice solution providers can deploy added workflows at greater speed and lower cost compared with the integration technology and more heavy testing necessary in the early days of the voice market, points out Deutsch.

“The ability to rapidly integrate additional voice workflows with back-end WMS solutions with Web services has really reduced the cost and complexity of integration,” says Deutsch. “That makes for a stronger cost/benefit equation when you want to deploy an additional workflow to even a small group of front-line workers, like a handful of people doing replenishment. As a result, we’re seeing more adoption of voice across various workflows.”

While in the past many organizations began voice implementations with order picking, today many of Honeywell’s Voice solution users are applying voice to upstream processes like receiving, put away and replenishment, says James Hendrickson, director of product and offering management with Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions.

Voice automation of these upstream processes not only speeds up overall cycle time, it reduces errors that can foul up picking. “As more organizations deal with e-commerce where the cost of errors is really high, we’ve actually seen some of our customers who’ve deployed voice first for put away or restocking, because they want to speed up and improve the inbounding process,” says Hendrickson.

Another shift in voice workflows involves robotics. For one thing, explains Hendrickson, voice can be a productivity enhancer for maintenance technicians servicing automated systems. Beyond that, Honeywell has been working collaboratively with autonomous mobile robot (AMR) vendors including Fetch Robotics and 6 River Systems to examine ways in which Honeywell’s voice-directed solution can blend with AMR workflows.

Possibilities include combining a pick-to-light workstation for goods-to-person robotics with some use of voice-directed tasks. It’s also possible voice could be used as a trigger to command a robot to move somewhere or as an alternative means of interacting with AMRs versus always using a touchscreen.

Hendrickson says it remains early days for figuring out the best ways to mash up voice-directed and robot workflows, but it makes sense to use the technology that is most efficient for each task. He adds that Honeywell has worked with some AMR vendors to test blended scenarios and has been demonstrating some of these at industry events. “The point is that you have options regarding the best interface, and you’ll be able to pick the one that best suits your implementation,” he says.

3. Analytics for managers

Traditionally, the key users of voice solutions are front-line workers. Voice-directed vendors, however, have long offered analytics for managers. These offerings have continued to evolve in sophistication and their ability to provide decision support beyond basic “descriptive” analytics such as lines per hour picked.

“What’s becoming more important is the predictive and prescriptive analytics capabilities that allow you to anticipate and prepare for what’s coming down the road tomorrow, next week or for the next peak season so managers can set up the operation for success,” says Phillips.

Analytics increasingly are used to plan out resource needs, says Phillips, as well as managing daily operations or spotting potential trouble spots. “Using analytics, you can make sure you don’t have a worker who has completed a set of assignments, but hasn’t been given a new assignment yet, or to ensure you don’t have a worker running behind on an assignment to the point an order is becoming at risk of missing the shipment time,” he says.

Deutsch agrees that analytics has become increasingly important. A tool from E+P called TimesSquare Cloud Analytics is aimed at providing end-user organizations with a Cloud analytics cockpit that can bring together multiple data sources and live graphics like digital maps or live camera feeds that show activity at docks or with automated machinery. For one user, says Deutsch, this tool provided a way to create a dynamic dashboard without having to run back to its corporate information technology (IT) department for a special project. “It’s a solution that is meant for the operations side of the business, so they can bring together multiple data sources without getting into a large IT project,” says Deutsch.

4. Workforce optimization

Some vendors with roots in voice solutions, such as Lucas Systems, have branched out into related solutions aimed at improving “work execution” processes. Lucas’s Engage makes use of data from voice activity, but it’s more than an analytics module for voice, says Justin Ritter, director of project engineering for Lucas Systems. The difference is work execution has optimization functions that consider various factors including order priorities and gate/shipment commit times to orchestrate work execution in a warehouse.

For example, a module in the solution, called Dynamic Work Optimization (DWO), uses advanced mathematical models to drive intelligent batching and pick path optimization. Thus, explains Ritter, DWO is an optimization function that managers don’t have to sit down and use like an analytic module, but that works to address a key pain point—reducing the time that workers typically spend on travel to pick faces or other points of work.

“If you look at how much of warehouse workers time is spent actually doing picks or put movements in front of a location, it might only be 30% of the shift time with conventional approaches, but what about addressing that other 70% of the time—the travel time,” says Ritter. “When we talk about work execution and work optimization, it’s about the best way to execute work relative the priorities to come up with efficient batches of work. By batching things differently, and doing pick path optimization, you can really optimize your workforce and get more productivity.”

Work execution solution not only coordinates voice-directed tasks, it orchestrates multiple activities and systems, says Ritter, factoring in order priorities and order completion. The software also can consider work-in-process status to check whether some areas of the warehouse are too busy or not busy enough when deciding how to execute work. Additionally, says Ritter, work execution should be able to consider robots as a labor asset and assign tasks to them and coordinate their work with tasks carried out by humans. “From a management perspective, execution is really about optimizing all your assets, whether that labor is in the form of a human picker or a robot, to get the most efficiency from your operations,” he adds.

Companies mentioned in this article:

• Ehrhardt + Partner Solutions
• Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions
• Lucas Systems
• Voxware