Drive Performance, Productivity and Safety Improvements With Voice-Directed Workflows

For decades, voice technology has been used in order fulfillment and manufacturing operations to empower mobile workers and drive process improvements. Primarily used to automate inefficient picking processes and provide structure to maintenance and inspection (M&I) tasks, voice-directed technology delivers proven operational efficiencies and worker benefits, including:

• Improved accuracy and throughput
• Fast adoption, training and onboarding
• Eyes-up, hands-free operation

As a leader in the development of voice recognition hardware and software, Honeywell has perfected the implementation of voice-directed technologies in distribution, fulfillment and manufacturing facilities of all varieties. From small distribution centers to large enterprise operations, Honeywell Voice is used by nearly one million workers every day around the world.

To stay competitive and prepare for the future, companies are digitally transforming the ways in which they conduct business and manage their supply chains. Voice technology is uniquely positioned to help companies make this transition and address a new era of operational priorities, including:

Promoting worker efficiency, limiting steps and worker redundancy
Measuring the health of equipment, systems, assets and workers
Providing early warning of damaged or defective equipment

Today’s rapidly evolving supply chain is being shaped by a dynamic mix of consumer, labor-related and market trends. Recent advancements in voice technology are designed to help companies respond to the following supply chain challenges:

• Address e-commerce consumer demands — as consumers transition from in-store browsing to online (omnichannel) shopping, they will expect faster, more accurate fulfillment at reduced costs.
• Voice-directed picking processes deliver up to 99 percent accuracy improvements and significant increases in productivity.  
• Improve worker well-being — creating a safe and positive workplace environment is critical to not only improving workers’ health, longevity and productivity, but also achieving long-term business success.
• Voice-enabled workflows promote worker safety via hands-free, eyes-up operation to deliver maximum ergonomic benefits and workplace satisfaction.
• Leverage data for business excellence — as technology continues to drive process improvements, companies will seek productivity tools that can gather data and contribute to their operational intelligence.
  
• Honeywell Voice combines advanced hardware and smart software to help companies transform worker productivity and performance data into business intelligence and actionable insights.

Easy Picking

Distribution and fulfillment operations managers will tell you that picking processes are among the most time-consuming and labor-intensive — yet least cost-effective — tasks in the distribution center. . In an era where on-time and accurate deliveries are the keys to preserving customer loyalties, order errors can literally make or break an e-commerce fulfillment operation. Consider the following impacts that picking processes can have on a typical facility:

• In an eight-hour day, workers are unproductive for an average total of 22 minutes.
• Approximately 134 mis-picks are reported each week.
• Annual costs associated with mis-picks are approximately $400,000 per DC.

It’s no surprise that 80 percent of managers have been tasked with finding cost savings from existing operations — and why many turn to Honeywell Voice to help deliver those savings.

Traditional paper-based processes and radio frequency (RF) workflows are error-prone, have known productivity limits, and don’t easily integrate into a facility’s management systems or operational data stream. By introducing Honeywell Voice into a DC’s operations, operators can replace these cumbersome picking processes with worker-friendly, voice-directed efficiencies. Honeywell Voice offers the potential to deliver up to 99.9 percent accuracy with significant productivity gains, all while improving worker satisfaction and safety.

In connected operations, enhanced visibility to worker availability and incoming orders gives DC managers the ability to quickly adapt to shifting priorities and seasonal peaks. Honeywell Voice allows for flexible labor assignments — which translate into more cost-effective allocation of resources, dynamic inventory adjustments and drastically reduced training times.

Smart Maintenance and Inspection

Historically, preventative maintenance and inspection activities were performed and documented manually, often with little structure to routines or consideration to equipment lockouts. These imprecise methods are problematic for many reasons:

Susceptible to inaccurate documentation 

• Difficulty in evaluating the performance of M&I teams and staff 
• Inefficient means of validating the correct service task or segment
• Potential for accidental misconfiguration or time wasted due to conflicting specifications

And in today’s highly regulated, uptime-driven environments, these traditional methods are no longer enough. Honeywell Voice serves as a process adherence tool in M&I environments, adding structure and intelligence to M&I processes via:

• Increased productivity and efficiency through linear workflow organization
• Minimal lockout and downtime due to smart service planning
• Improved accuracy and quality from process consistency and uniformity
• QR-based validation for segment/operator service task initiation
• Network integration for accurate reporting and near real-time data transmission

Regardless of the skill levels of your M&I staff, voice-guided workflows can help to ensure accountability and process uniformity in individual facilities and across the enterprise. Of course, safety, ergonomic and worker-friendly benefits are also applicable to M&I functions.

Built to Last

Our ruggedized, durable Honeywell Voice hardware is designed to perform in the most demanding environments, from cold storage warehouses to hot receiving and unloading areas. When considering the total cost of ownership of a voice solution, keep in mind that many legacy Honeywell Voice headsets have been used in similar environments for more than two decades.

So if you’re ready to take the next steps in productivity, accuracy and hands-free performance, Honeywell Voice is designed to seamlessly integrate and scale with your business needs.