Grocery wholesaler, Appleby Westward Group Ltd (AWG), is investing almost £200,000 in BCP's Accord Voice Recognition technology for its ambient goods distribution centre (RDC) at Saltash in Cornwall

AWG is one of the top 20 UK grocery delivered wholesalers with turnover exceeding £140m. It operates from two main RDCs - Saltash in Cornwall, which handles all ambient goods, and a smaller depot in Cullompton, Devon, for chilled and frozen foods.

The investment in Voice encompasses BCP's complete Accord Voice Directed Picking solution, operating with the latest Vocollect Talkman T5 terminals on a Symbol Technologies Spread Spectrum 24 RF network.  It replaces a paper based 'pick by label' system and, when fully implemented, will be used by 32 pickers at the Saltash RDC.  

Supply chain specialist, BCP, is supplying the full solution, including all hardware, software and services, and is working with AWG's specially appointed in-house Voice implementation team to install it as a phased implementation.

Voice Technology transforms the way warehouse operators work:  eliminating the need for hand-held devices or paper instructions frees up both hands and eyes for the task, allowing operators to work faster and safer; substituting manual entry of data with verbal instructions and verification eliminates errors and saves time.

It's early days yet, but productivity and accuracy improvements from Voice are already coming through and, as Phil Brewer, AWG Operations & IT Director, explains: "We expect these to be more dramatic as picking in the main warehouse converts to Voice and operators have to pick splits and singles as well as cases and pallets."

Moreover, pickers, initially a little sceptical about the new technology, have adapted to it quickly, finding it simple to learn and adopt.  Phil Brewer: "Pickers really like the new technology and they're now keen to extend it to other aspects of warehouse work as they have found it makes their jobs much easier."