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Introduction
A warehouse is a large building where raw materials or manufactured goods may be stored before their export or distribution for sale. Similarly, a Warehouse Management System (WMS) is necessary for improving the efficiency of a company's warehouse operations by controlling its inventory, shipping and receiving, order fulfillment, tracking of goods to returns processing. A Warehouse Management System (WMS) is a system to control movement and storage of goods within a warehouse and process the associated transactions, according to Dave Piasecki. Relying on paper trails and manual data entry to manage your warehouse decreases worker productivity and inventory accuracy. Therefore, the use of voice technology that recognizes speech and speech blend to allow workers to communicate with the Warehouse Management System (WMS) is being utilized to optimize workforce. Voice Directed Picking (VDP) is a subset of WMS. According to Sam Flanders, VDP is a process of order selection in a warehouse and distribution center using verbal commands that are given to and taken from the central WMS server by an order selector. The order selector wears a headset with a microphone which is attached to a small PDA or a control unit worn around the waist. That device is responsible for communication between the picker and the server. Voice directed picking technology has evolved greatly in the past few years

History of voice picking innovation
With three decades of voice software expertise, VDP continues to innovate towards one simple goal: to empower voice self-sufficiency in the warehouse. 1980s: Prototype: Initial testing was conducted in this decade in extremely noisy conditions like lumber mills, oil rigs etc. Late 1990s: Proprietary Beginnings: A typical voice recognition technology delivered 99.9% accuracy but only proprietary equipment was available in the market and implementation was pretty expensive. The necessary wearable/portable devices were bulky in size and manufactured by the voice vendors themselves. Early 2000s: Custom Solutions: Industry started to mature slowly, and the impressive ROI of voice picking became famous. But the solutions were still proprietary and expensive. Customizations took months and changes were costly. Late 2000s: Adaptive Software: Companies like Voxware evolved the industry with its open and configurable voice picking software. Such systems offered great adaptability and flexibility. Companies like Motorola started making the hardware thus ending vendor lock-ins. Customization and implementations lag were brought down from months to weeks. Early 2010s: Real time mobility and beyond: Companies like Voxware ported their products to tablets. Voxware became the first vendor to support Android. Those proprietary custom voice solutions were incompatible with new technology.

Applications of VPS today by different industries
VDP has already been successfully used in variety of industries for a range of applications to address logistical challenges. Some of those industries that use VDP are as follows:
 * Retail & Distribution – Retailers depend upon having the right product on the right shelf at the right time to optimize the flow of goods. For example, Oriental Trading Company, Republic National Distributing Company.


 * Apparel – Garments on hangers, and style/color/size management are critically important. Example, Augusta, Nautica.
 * Housewares- At Cornerstone, order fillers use turret trucks to pick large items from high-bay racks.
 * Food – VDP picking solution that gives us greater picking accuracy right out of the box, increase productivity and reduce cost to move the same amount of goods. For example, Dunkin Donuts, Nabisco, Kroger, U.S. Foodservice.


 * Healthcare – It helps in just-in-time distribution to hospitals reducing picking errors and overtime. Example, Sentara health care, Cardinal Health.


 * Grocery & Convenience Store Distribution – It helps in just-in-time supply of inventory, often perishable or high value is serious. Example, CVS/Pharmacy, Wal-Mart, 7-Eleven.


 * Publishing - Handling thousands of SKUs and dealing with minimal errors. Example, McGraw hill, Harper Collins.

Benefits of Voice Directed Picking
There are numerous benefits of Voice Directed Picking applications over other technologies however, the most unique is the ability to keeps pickers’ both hands free while doing their tasks. This allows pickers to focus on their work, travel path, product location and product movement tasks rather than on a pick ticket or a keyboard. In addition, it reduces visual and mental fatigue by a large degree. The followings are other advantages of VDP over other technologies: High accuracy: Most organization is specifically concerned with the accuracy of supply chain management. Functionally, VDP is extremely similar to traditional RF Scanner Picking, VDP allows pickers to confirm either the location or the product itself while picking. Picker either reads the pre-defined check string for the location or the UPC number. But unlike with RF Scanner, picker does not have to scan the product and put the scanner away before picking. Users are more accountable for their quality, as the system allows managers to pinpoint the date, time, location, item, and quantity of each action. Increase productivity: Increasing productivity is the main goal of most organizations. Having hands free means associate can focus more and process orders faster. A large number or orders can be picked as if the batch of orders were a single order. VDP system instructs pickers how many to pick and where to put the picked products. The associates never have to slow down to key in data and there is no lag time between tasks so associates move quickly and efficiently through assignments. Training and employee satisfaction: Voice picking solutions are easy to learn and to use. Training a new member to VDP can be achieved quicker and with less effort which means companies can save training time and labor costs. In most cases, most associates become proficient and achieve standard productivity and accuracy rates in less than a week. This is due to the user friendly device and voice system tell the associate what to do at every step and offer interactive help at any time.

Drawbacks of Voice Directed Picking
Limitations on recognizing words: Those people who do not have consistent voice pattern often find it difficult to work with VDP. It often mishears words and numbers resulting in increase of frustration level. Additional labeling needed: If additional labeling is required while picking, it will be very difficult to do it with VDP system. At present, VDP systems do not have printing capabilities. In this type of situation, paper based picking is suitable. However, some RF based systems hard wired to printers could be used. Disconnection from server: Although wireless-ness is what makes it so appealing, it often gets disconnected with the central server causing unwanted pause in workflow. However, this can be eliminated by adding more server routers across the warehouse and distribution center.

Manager’s outlook
Organizations and managers are looking for solutions to adapt to new technologies to improve customer satisfaction and enhancing its brand reputation. Safety and compliance regulations: the benefit of VDP is it keeps both hands and eyes free and therefore reduces the chance of injury at work floors. This also leads to less damage and breakage, which can ultimately lead to other incidents or injuries. Going Green: VDP saves from going paperless and reducing the reliance on labels can go a long way to reducing not only the cost of paper, but energy efficiency by using fewer printers and waste related to paper and other supplies. Simplified hiring and reduces staff turnovers: Voice-directed solutions simplify hiring, as there is less emphasis required on spoken or written language skills. VDP application is available in different languages that enable workers to work in the dominant local language. Workers see the company investing more strongly in them and have an increased sense of value thus increasing productivity. Individual performance can be recognized and rewarded according to their performance and in return satisfied workers stay with the company. Voice picking systems are extremely efficient for many reasons. In spite of these benefits, some managers are skeptical about implementing VDP. Some of the often-cited inhibitions along with their counter arguments are: The system might be expensive – The cost of implementation has decreased drastically in past couple of years. If a company can afford an RF based scanner system, they can probably afford it too. The payback period is very low and ROI is pretty impressive. Headsets might create safety hazards in a warehouse as pickers might not hear incoming locomotives – The headsets are worn on one ear only, and are acoustically transparent. So they are able to hear all safety-related sounds. In fact, it is compliant with OSHA requirements. Associates may not like talking to a machine – Despite initial resistance, once they start using it, they should like it. It highly simplifies their jobs and reduces their fatigue level. It might not work on a background with a lot of noise – Noise cancellation headphones and microphones are readily available in the market, and software is designed to be sensitive to both noise burst and background noise. Besides, the first time recognition rates of the speech recognition software are 99% and above.

Conclusion
Current economy has led companies to find ways to increase productivity re-tool existing business processes for greater efficiency. Voice directed work helps eliminate a lot of the inefficiencies that come with other methods of warehouse management, and helps companies find that competitive edge to meet the evolving demands placed on distribution centers and warehouses.