Warehouse work can be mundane, making it hard to keep workers engaged.
Order picking using paper, mobile terminals, and tablets involves multiple screens and steps. Scanning and keyed data entry is time-intensive, frustrates employees, and takes excessive time to learn. Any activity that takes 3-4 transactions to pick and verify diminishes labor productivity and reduces your ability to retain workers. Voice-picking technology completes an item pick transaction in one step, simplifying work, creating a better employee experience, and increasing productivity.
A pick-by-voice solution is a paperless technology that equips workers with a small lightweight mobile wearable computer, wireless headset, and hands-free barcode scanner. Voice commands guide workers efficiently throughout the warehouse to complete assigned work tasks.
By combining voice commands with product location data and barcode scanning for verification, distribution centers achieve faster, more accurate order picking.
Manual warehouse order-picking operations can consume 50% or more of a distribution center’s labor. The latest voice-directed order fulfillment picking suite can ensure that same-day high-priority orders ship on time while cutting your labor spend by half.
Without lean, efficient, automated pick pack and ship order fulfillment processes, finding and keeping reliable employees and ensuring customer service level agreements is becoming harder.
A primarily manual warehouse relies on outdated practices making the work more physically and mentally taxing, expensive to operate, difficult to attract new employees, and retain existing workers.
A pick by voice order fulfillment suite with voice and scan commands can:
ERPs and most WMS systems cannot optimize order release, perform precision cartonization logic, and efficiently execute wave and batch order picking with paper pick tickets. They lack efficiencies provided by a pick by voice order fulfillment automation suite. Order picking requires workers to physically traverse the warehouse multiple times a day, often pushing a cart. The sheer number of daily steps increases worker fatigue and burnout and decreases task efficiency.
Repetitive tasks like prolonged standing, walking, bending, reaching, and placing put added strain on employees over time, leading to ergonomic strain, fatigue, stress, and injury. The physical toll on workers is just one drawback of this method.
This method of picking also heightens the mental load. Workers are required to memorize product item locations to meet busy production schedules. Learning where items live takes time, and you may not have time to spare if you struggle with high employee turnover.
Accuracy issues are also increased; manual picking processes require employers to check digits or navigate complex screens, often resulting in a 1 in 22 error rate, further increasing worker stress and inefficiency.
The truth is that experienced workers want to perform their work more safely and productively, and the younger workforce doesn’t want to deal with outdated systems. They’ve grown up with technology and expect it.
The bottom line? Higher employee satisfaction equates to better employee retention. Let’s explore how technology can help.
It’s not just bigger organizations that can benefit from technology.
Small- and medium-sized businesses can experience significant improvements in worker productivity and satisfaction by implementing automated picking solutions. If your business relies on manual workstations for sorting, order consolidation, parcel manifesting, and shipping, you can experience significant returns by automating these processes.
Not only can warehouse automation, like voice technology, improve the accuracy and timeliness of managing and moving products throughout the facility, but it can also improve the employee experience.
Traditional means of picking often rely on knowledge exchange between a more experienced worker and a new one. However, that information isn’t so easily transferred. Time constraints, production demands, and changing needs often mean that a new hire is left to figure things out independently. An effective voice-picking technology provides workers with clear, guided instructions, reducing the cognitive load common with learning the layout of a warehouse.
It’s no secret there has been a dramatic shift in how people think about work. Changing jobs is a yearly occurrence for a significant percentage of the warehousing workforce. Not only is training these employees a major hurdle, but the cost of recruiting and onboarding can range from $4,000 to $5,000 per new hire.
Voice-picking technology can’t recruit new employees, but its positive user experience can retain good employees by providing higher ease of use through its step-by-step guidance. It simplifies the onboarding process and minimizes the manager and supervisor’s time spent training so new employees can be productive in 15 to 20 minutes and existing employees can more quickly adapt to new work tasks in minutes.
Traditional picking methods (paper sheets, tickets, terminal, and tablet) suffer from higher pick error rates than the latest pick by voice technology. They are not only slower, but have a .75% to .90% average error rate. An employee can create on average 12 errors a shift, 5 to 6X higher errors than voice picking’s 99.98 to 99.99%s 1 to 2 errors per 1000 accuracy rate.
Instead of confidently performing their work, operations second-guess, causing them to stop and count items a second or third time during order picking, further lowering productivity. This leads operations to design a secondary packing workstation so every picked item gets secondary handling, which can double the labor cost in order picking.
Choosing the right order-picking technology and uniting pick by voice with a conveyor-based in-line weight and vision carton audit station can improve order quality, streamline workflows, and further reduce the 1-2 errors per 1,000 voice-picking errors. Pick-and-pack voice and scan validation are integrated into each work task action, eliminating secondary inspection and packing labor.
The right blend of warehouse automation technologies in order picking, automated audit, print and apply labeling and sorting, managed with an order fulfillment automation suite, enforces faster, more accurate warehouse operations. It also captures historical operational data, quality, hourly and daily order completion labor usage, and performance detail. Showing the real-time performance results on a few TVs in the distribution center improves performance KPIs, builds employees’ pride, provides a sense of ownership, and boosts morale as they own the higher order fulfillment efficiency and contribute to the business’s success.
Traditional warehouse picking methods often place significant physical and mental strain on workers due to excessive walking, repetitive reaching and lifting, and the constant need to stop and perform manual data entry. This strain can lead to fatigue, musculoskeletal injuries, and long-term health issues. Voice-directed picking systems, especially when powered by Numina Group’s RDS™ software, reduce these risks by enabling hands-free, heads-up operation. RDS Order Release Optimization Software intelligently batches like orders together, cutting down unnecessary travel within the warehouse, while ergonomic warehouse design—such as placing fast-moving items within the golden zone (knee to shoulder height)—minimizes reaching and lifting strain. Pairing voice picking with AMR Batchbot automation further reduces physical effort, with the robot handling the cart movement, enabling safer, more efficient workflows and improved productivity.
Forklift accidents remain among OSHA’s most frequently cited safety violations every year. Industrial trucks used in warehouses carry serious dangers, including risks of tipping over, blind spots, unbalanced loads, mechanical failures, and potential injury to personnel.
By leveraging voice picking with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), a distribution center can reduce up to 50% of fork truck usage, increase each and case picking rates 30% to 40%, while reducing operator walk time to significantly reduce the potential for forklift-related incidents. Implementing end-to-end automation solutions that utilize a blend of advanced technologies can greatly enhance safety while improving operation efficiency.
The current landscape of increased demand and labor shortages highlights these dangers, necessitating a reevaluation of operations to prioritize safety. Employers must adopt innovative solutions to mitigate risks and protect their workforce.
Have you read the recent bill signed by New York State? The intent of the “Warehouse Worker Injury Reduction Program” is for employers to develop injury reduction programs designed to identify and minimize employee injury related to material handling tasks. If a risk cannot be corrected, the employer is responsible for engineering or administrative controls or redesigning workstations to reduce the risk.
“I like the voice-picking system’s accuracy and efficiency. At other companies, 96% pick accuracy is acceptable. Here, we’re pushing for 100%, and I believe that’s attainable with this system.” — Daniel McCarson, Picking Manager at Visual Comfort & Co.
Voice-picking technology combines multiple human sensory capabilities and barcode scanning into one technology. It uses sight, hearing, speaking, and barcode scan validation of the pick-and-put tasks to streamline warehouse order picking and other operations. Traditional terminal and tablet picking systems require workers to perform 2 to 3 more actions at each scan location. Then scan the SKU confirmation and key in unit quantity pick to confirm each pick location and SKU quantity picks. This takes 3-5 seconds per transaction adding 10 to 15 seconds of wasted time to each pick task, increasing the probability of a pick error.
The RDS Victory Voice™ Picking Suite from the Numina Group replaces the manual data entry with a leaner, faster operation using voice and hands-free barcode scan for speed and accuracy.
RDS Voice combines a mobile wearable computer, hands-free barcode scanners, and ergonomic headsets to improve the productivity of order picking and other warehouse work.
Our voice-pick automation suite integrates the existing ERP’s and WMS systems to optimize the end-to-end order fulfillment processes by reducing unnecessary touches and steps that lower labor usage and increase accuracy. We work in partnership with the client’s team to analyze, design, and document the process improvements and efficiency gains, which justifies the investment in the defined warehouse automation solution.
Voice and scanning keep the operators moving and focused on each step with succinct instructions. RDS eliminates repetitive reading of check digits to reduce voice fatigue. The pick-by-voice and barcode scanning technology has a 20-50 millisecond response between each action, increasing the speed and improving picking accuracy in each and mixed case pallet picking applications.
We understand automation adoption means adapting to new practices and operating procedures within the warehouse. That is why Numina Group has developed its pick-by-voice order fulfillment automation suite to be simple and straightforward for workers to learn, so they’re productive within 15 to 20 minutes after putting on a headset.
Faster, more accurate picking, easy operator training, and use yields significant savings the first week after going live. The business receives a major benefit in improved workforce productivity and gaining a rapid ROI as well.
Using voice commands, barcode scans, and a streamlined workflow, this system achieves 99.99% accuracy—eliminating errors and secondary order inspection requirements common in handheld terminals, tablets, and paper-based systems. Our documented case studies show a 30% to 50% higher performance in warehouses with outdated picking methods. Learn more.
Merit Medical, a leading medical and surgical supply manufacturer, partnered with The Numina Group to enhance its order fulfillment operations. By implementing Numina’s RDS™ Warehouse Execution and Control System and voice-picking technology, they transitioned from a manual, single-order pick-to-paper process to an advanced, automated batch-picking system, improving accuracy to 99.9%. This investment in the voice directed order fulfillment automation led to over a 100% increase in daily order throughput capacity, enabling Merit Medical to automate the execution of same-day priority shipments while reducing labor costs per order shipment. View full case study.
Let’s discuss the business improvements and benefits Numina Group’s RDS voice picking suite and automation technologies can have on improving productivity, customer service levels, and warehouse work force job satisfaction.
The Numina Group
10331 Werch Drive
Woodridge, IL 60517
630-343-2600
How the Right Warehouse Automation Decisions Can Solve Your Labor Woes As the economy roars
The Numina Group
10331 Werch Drive
Woodridge, IL 60517
630-343-2600
