Voice-Directed Warehousing
Set new productivity and accuracy standards with voice-directed warehousing
Lucas voice-directed warehousing, powered by Jennifer™, transforms warehouse work, delivering immediate improvements in productivity and accuracy. Long before Alexa and Siri, Jennifer™ was making work easier and faster for tens of thousands of workers on five continents. Combine voice, scanning, and vision, and improve end-to-end warehouse tasks.
Voice-Directed Warehousing Optimization
Our voice-directed warehousing solutions are powered with unique AI-based intelligence in Jennifer™, who adapts and optimizes processes in your warehouse. Jennifer supports technologies such as barcode scanning, smart glasses and RFID to help automate manual, hands-on processes in your warehouse.
Maximize the productivity of your warehouse workers with voice picking technology, workflow improvements, process optimization and adaptive voice-directed workflows.
Picking by voice can achieve greater than 99% accuracy rates with efficient pick/put validations (variable check strings, quantity validations, countdowns) and optimized audit criteria.
Make work easier and faster for your warehouse workers with easy to use multi-modal mobile applications built for standard mobile computers.
Reduce travel 30-70% with AI-based travel optimization combining intelligent batch picking and path optimization.
Reduce training and onboarding with dual speech recognition technology and voice applications that require no voice training.
Provide your warehouse managers with real-time visibility and control of operations so they can increase throughput and manage peaks.
Improve worker safety and ergonomics by enabling workers to be eyes on work and hands free.
Jennifer provides adaptive voice-directed workflows that can be configured to meet specific business requirements. (e.g. voice-directed put walls for order consolidation).
Reuse and extend your WMS or ERP systems with our standards-based interfaces that make integration quick and effective.
We helped Baptist Health, a leading healthcare provider, double picking productivity.
“The previous average picking rate in the LUM area was 50-56 lines per hour (LPH). Today it is 100-110. That is a 100% improvement, and in bulk picking, the number is about 20 percent.”
Dale Adamson, AVP of Logistics and Distribution
We helped Apex Tool Group, a leading manufacturer of hand and power tools, operate with 10% fewer man hours.
“You rarely implement a new system and have users tell you ‘It’s made my life so much easier!’ Making the processes better for associates makes them more productive. And that’s better for the business.”
Chris Rufa, Senior Director of Global Distribution“The previous average picking rate in the LUM area was 50-56 lines per hour (LPH). Today it is 100-110. That is a 100% improvement, and in bulk picking, the number is about 20 percent.”
Dale Adamson, AVP of Logistics and Distribution“You rarely implement a new system and have users tell you ‘It’s made my life so much easier!’ Making the processes better for associates makes them more productive. And that’s better for the business.”
Chris Rufa, Senior Director of Global DistributionFrequently Asked Questions
Every interaction between the picker and the voice application are tracked so managers can be provided with a management console to view the progress of orders as they are picked.
For a step-by-step walkthrough, read our “Introduction to voice picking”.
Jennifer™ voice adapts and optimizes end-to-end warehouse tasks – picking, receiving, putaway, sortation, loading, audit, replenishment, cycle count, returns, and more. Jennifer incorporates complementary technologies like barcode scanning, smart glasses and RFID to help automate any manual, hands-on process in your warehouse.
- Improve Productivity: Depending on your process (e.g., full case picking from pallets vs. piece picking from flow racks), productivity gains may range from 10-90%. Lucas customers have achieved average picking productivity gains of 36%.
- Reduce Errors: Even DCs with 99.9% picking accuracy before voice can reduce picking errors by 25% or more with voice picking.
- Ensure Safety: Because operators are eyes and hands free, they are more aware of surroundings. Operations that add voice solutions often see a decrease in accidents.
- Decrease Training Time: Voice directed processes are more intuitive for users. Most Lucas customers find that a new associate can be trained and begin going solo in less than a day, and become proficient in one to two weeks.
- Heads-Up Improves Accuracy and Safety. – With voice, users never have to look down at a terminal screen to get information.
- Two Hands Free Is More Productive – Voice users never have to juggle a scanner while trying to grab and move items, so they can grab, lift and move items more efficiently.
- Ease of Use and Training Training time may increase when moving from paper to RF due to the need to educate workers on how to use an unfamiliar piece of equipment, in addition to learning the details of the job.
- Voice Plus Flexibility – We offer the ability to configure a voice-directed process to combine speech recognition and scanning, where it makes sense.
Looking to see how voice directed warehousing compares to other technologies (pick-to-light, automation, etc.) read our recent post, “How Voice Compares”.
The Lucas software is designed to easily integrate to virtually any on-premise, hosted, or cloud-based IT or automation system: ERP, order management, and warehouse management packages (SAP, Oracle, BlueYonder, Manhattan, Infor, Microsoft, etc.); custom-developed host systems; warehouse control systems; and other automation and IT systems used in the DC.
Yes! The Lucas management console gives supervisors and managers real-time visibility into their operations, exceptions, associate productivity, and workflow, as well as powerful tools to manage workers using our voice-directed mobile applications. The management console also lets managers configure how they view information to suit their needs and preferences. And since supervisors today need to be as mobile as their workers, they can access the console on tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices.
Voice-capable hardware devices include but are not limited to:
- Handheld and wearable RF devices
- Vehicle mounted devices
- Tablets
- Smartphones
- Smartwatches
- Smart glasses
Read our “Buyer’s Guide for Mobile Computers” to learn which devices you should use.
Savings with a voice solution depends on more than the technology itself. To help determine your potential cost savings, we created an ROI calculator which only takes a few minutes to complete. And although voice-directed technology can help you reduce DC costs in many areas (e.g., replenishment, put away, QC/audit, receiving, loading, etc.), this calculator focuses on direct labor and accuracy costs in picking.
- In 1998, we introduced hardware independent voice-directed applications featuring Jennifer™.
- Introduced voice-directed bucket brigade picking in 2003.
- First company to deploy voice-directed solutions on multi-modal mobile devices in 2005, allowing the seamless combination of voice, scanning and screens.
- Introduced a variable check string validation in 2008.
- First to adopt Android in 2014 – a full five years ahead of traditional voice providers.
- Only dual speech engine technology available on the market that interprets associates spoken responses, in multiple languages, regardless of accents and background noise.
- Introduced AI-based smart batching and pick path optimization in 2017.
- In 2020, we became the first company to deploy voice applications on smartwatches.
- Introduced machine learning based tools for dynamic slotting and predictive workforce planning in 2021.
