|  | Moving toward the talking tag
Raf Jezierski, Marketing Director Vocollect Europe
The monumental productivity advances promised by RFID have attracted the attention of the entire supply chain industry. By allowing complete and accurate life-cycle tracking of a product, analysts claim RFID will create faster shipments, fewer errors, and cost savings that more than justify the expense of these systems.
But far from clarifying the issues surrounding RFID, all this headline-grabbing attention has only muddied the waters – especially when it comes to the integration of RFID and voice technology.
The good news is that RFID and voice are complementary technologies that enhance the benefits offered by each. Here’s why: RFID tags can provide extensive information about products – their product code, size, manufacturing date, expiration date, they can be easily updated and provide an ‘audit trail’. They also can be placed on locations, such as shelves and pallets. But information alone does not make business processes more efficient. RFID systems don’t tell distribution centre (DC) workers what to do with their products or the “how.”
This is where voice-directed work comes in. Voice implements a two-way dialogue between the DC workers and the warehouse management system. Instead of relying on paper lists or a handheld device display screen to relay information to be interpreted and acted upon, workers use a very natural form of communication – voice – to perform their daily assignments. This capability makes them more productive, more accurate and safer as they move between tasks, whether they are operating with a stationary RFID reader or a body-worn device.
On its own, RFID cannot tell workers what to do with products. Voice, on its own doesn’t extract detailed information about the product. But when companies combine the two technologies – creating the equivalent of a “talking tag” – they not only acquire the ability to direct product receiving, selection, replenishment and other operations; they also get automatic product identification and verification each step of the way.
Together, the potential productivity gains are staggering, because a high proportion of errors are the result of items being incorrectly picked from a location. With the combined capability of voice and RFID, the team member can be notified immediately if a given pick contains the right items, is expired or has been recalled. This virtually eliminates the possibility of shipping incorrect or obsolete products.
Today there are many more voice systems in place in warehouses than RFID systems, simply because voice has been used in industrial settings for two full decades. As RFID technology matures, more and more systems will be deployed together with existing voice applications. Just as barcode scanners, printers, automatic storage equipment and other material handling systems have been integrated with voice, it is possible to integrate RFID and voice as well. Most RFID systems will employ standard interfaces and will easily connect to voice either through the existing network infrastructure or directly as peripheral devices. Eventually, as the size and cost of RFID systems decrease, it will be possible to purchase turnkey systems that have both capabilities.
Voice recognition is arguably one of the most important technological breakthroughs in warehouse distribution in recent years, delivering up to 35 per cent increases in productivity, accuracy levels up to 99.99 per cent and above, as well as improving worker safety and job satisfaction.
RFID, although still in the early stages, promises to create similar dramatic returns. In the warehouse specifically, the use of RFID readers can produce nearly 100 per cent inventory accuracy, eliminate the need for cycle counts and reduce out-of-stock emergencies. However, these exceptional gains will only be realised when RFID is used to improve complete business processes, such as when combined with voice.
While DC managers and supply chain directors wait for the cost of RFID to come down – which may take some time – they need not put plans for voice-directed work on hold. In order to deliver real benefits, RFID implementations require the compliance of the entire supply chain, whereas voice can be applied at any point in the chain without requiring others in the chain to change their operations or make any changes to the consignment packaging or labelling. Voice applications can be implemented relatively easily; the payback on investment is typically realised within 12 months, and the accuracy gains as much as 50 per cent in six to nine months – all more than justify the investment. And as the ROI picture for RFID becomes clearer, these systems can be added for increased benefit without negating any of the original voice investment. |
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