Southwire Optimizes Ecom and B2B Distribution Using Lucas AI and Voice

There’s a good chance your home or business relies on products from Southwire to keep the lights on. As one of the leading manufacturers of wire and cable used in the transmission and distribution of electricity, Southwire delivers power to millions of people around the world. It is also a major supplier of electrical products, components and tools used by contractors and consumers and sold through hardware retailers.

Southwire Case Study

Southwire fulfills retail and direct-to-consumer orders (DTC) for extension cords and other consumer products from the same facilities that distribute reels of wire and cable weighing thousands of pounds. To optimize DC operations across this broad range of products and customers, Southwire turned to Lucas Systems for a voice-directed warehouse optimization solution to supplement their SAP WMS. In addition to voice-directed picking, Southwire is using Lucas AI-based travel optimization to reduce fulfillment costs for ecommerce orders.

“We’ve had less than .001% errors on orders shipped last month”
Chuck Jones, Director of Distribution Modernization

Accuracy and Efficiency Gains for Workers, Supervisors, and Delivery Drivers

30-50% Increase in ecommerce productivity

2X Increase in lines per hour

90% Reduction in training time

2+ Hours saved per day for DC managers

Creating an Intelligent Picking, Loading and Delivery
Process With Jennifer™ Voice

Intelligent Work Orchestration →

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.