Jack & Jill Boosts Direct Store Delivery With Voice-Directed Warehouse Optimization
Jack & Jill Ice Cream is a distributor of ice cream and frozen foods, beverages, and deli products serving convenience stores, drug stores and other retailers, foodservice customers, and independent grocers.
Jack & Jill’s leadership team wanted to improve accuracy and efficiency in their picking and loading processes by moving to an intelligent, voice-directed system. They also wanted to better organize products to make direct store delivery delivery easier and more efficient for drivers.
After evaluating a variety of warehouse software providers, the Jack & Jill team selected Lucas Systems based on software capability and flexibility, ease of use, integration with Oracle, and other factors.
“We wanted to increase accuracy, streamline the process, and eliminate the paper.”
Accuracy and Efficiency Gains for Workers, Supervisors, and Delivery Drivers
60% Reduction in Picking Errors
1,000 Reams of Paper Saved per Year
15% Increase in Productivity
Zero Loading Errors Made With Lucas
Picking, Loading and Direct Store Delivery Challenges
Prior to 2019, picking and loading processes were directed by paper using printed rack sheets from their Oracle ERP system. The paper-based processes created challenges for pickers, managers and delivery drivers.
Managers had to print, sort and distribute over 2,000 sheets of paper per day, taking them away from managing work on the warehouse floor. Racks or pallets were also occasionally mis-loaded, costing Jack & Jill time and money to rush deliveries and manage returns.
Paper Management
Supervisors spent the majority of their time managing paper.
Picking Accuracy
Picking accuracy was less than 99 percent.
Shipping Errors
Incorrectly loaded trailers caused rework and rush deliveries.
Inefficient Batching
Inefficient order groupings created challenges for direct store delivery drivers.
Creating an Intelligent Picking, Loading and Delivery
Process With Jennifer™ Voice
Jennifer – the voice and intelligence of the Lucas software – organizes, optimizes and directs the work on the warehouse floor.
Voice-Directed Picking →
Jennifer tells pickers what location to pick from, how many to grab, and in which rack location to place the items.
Voice-Directed Truck Loading →
Jennifer verifies correct placement of racks and pallets onto trucks and also creates a trailer map to aid the delivery drivers in their deliveries.
Intelligent Order Batching →
Jennifer creates more efficient groupings of orders on racks, and subdivides the racks into locations so that items for a given order could be grouped together.
Easy-to-Use Mobile Applications →
Workers were equipped with multi-modal mobile applications on android devices to maximize efficiency with voice, scanning and visual prompts.
Management Dashboards →
The Lucas solution also included a management console that gives supervisors real-time insight on productivity, workflow, exceptions, and other operational data.
“Having the supervisors out on the floor has led to overall better performance in the warehouse, and the dashboards show supervisors and workers how many pieces each person is picking per hour. Now everybody knows they need to do the same amount. Those are huge benefits for us. The dashboards are incredible.”
