Press Releases / Levy Home Entertainment Books Big Gains With Jennifer

Aug 24, 2011

Levy Home Entertainment Books Big Gains With Jennifer

Book Distributor Installs Bucket Brigade Voice Picking Systems as Part of Major Distribution Center Reconfiguration Project

Lucas Systems, Inc.,the largest independent provider of voice-directed warehouse applications, today announced that Levy Home Entertainment, a leading distributor of mass-market books to US retail stores, has recently installed Jennifer VoicePlus at three Distribution Centers. The Levy DCs are using Jennifer for voice picking, and have seen productivity gains of 15-18 percent, in addition to a 5 percent reduction in picking errors.

“With the growing popularity of ebooks, and our sluggish economy, every company in our industry is looking for ways to cut costs and improve efficiency,” said Ken Barvian, VP, Operations and Logistics of Levy Home Entertainment. “Jennifer is a big part of how we are meeting this challenge. With Jennifer, we are able to meet our daily and weekly production needs with fewer employees. The flexibility the system offers has helped us decrease our order cycle time while improving our productivity, and without sacrificing quality and accuracy. But we’ve realized additional savings beyond picking productivity. For example, the Jennifer solution determines exactly how many cartons we will need for each order, reducing the number of cartons we ship. This improved cartonization has allowed us to ship more units per carton, increasing our carton weight to offset rising transportation costs.”

Levy is using Jennifer VoicePlus in a multi-order bucket brigade picking system in which workers pick-and-pass order cartons to co-workers in a pick module. (For a fuller description of bucket brigades, see the latest entry on the Jennifer voice picking blog.) The Jennifer system at Levy allows workers to create trains of multiple orders, an innovation that boosts productivity beyond standard single-order bucket-brigade picking. Lucas first introduced multi-order bucket brigades in 2004.
Managers and supervisors at Levy also use Jennifer’s Engage Management Services Console, a Web-based management application, to manage audit criteria and other system configurations, to view exceptions and work in process, and to monitor associate productivity. Engage management tools are also available to managers on mobile devices using the Mobile Engage application. ”Engage and Mobile Engage are critical for managers,” said Barvian. “The tools let them see exceptions in real time, allowing them to react and adjust before issues can affect operations.”

About Lucas Systems, Inc.
Since 1998, Lucas Systems has delivered more voice-directed warehouse applications on a wider variety of mobile computers than any other company. Customers like Cardinal Health, The Container Store, HD Supply, Kraft Nabisco, OfficeMax, Oriental Trading Company and Rustoleum trust Lucas to deliver solutions that greatly improve worker productivity and accuracy because Lucas truly understands warehouse operations. Jennifer VoicePlus, the Lucas voice solution, creates a conversation with warehouse workers that frees their hands and eyes to focus on the job at hand. Jennifer also provides managers and supervisors with real-time reporting and management tools that help them better manage their operations. Tens of thousands of associates at hundreds of distribution centers work with Jennifer every day.

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