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INNOV-1: RFID and Voice – Perfect PartnersBrian Preece

Progress Exchange 200710 – 13 June, 2007, Phoenix, AZ USA

INNOV-1: RFID and Voice – Perfect Partners

Brian Preece

R & D Director

BCP Ltd

Who is BCP?• Major supplier in Europe of Food Wholesale,

Retail and Cash and Carry systems

• Users: Spar, NAAFI, Pets at Home, BWG, Musgrave, ADM, Morrisons, BFG etc…

• Area: UK and EU

• 1st “Extranet” - Late 1970s Telspar

• 1st Scanning in convenience stores in UK

• Early adopter of SonicMQ® with our AIMS wholesale/ retail messaging hub

INNOV-1: RFID and Voice - Perfect Partners



Agenda• Voice Direction compared and contrasted with RFID• Voice Directed Picking live demonstration• How Voice Direction works• Programming in the Voice Direction environment• Interfacing Voice Direction to OpenEdge® 10

Applications• How Voice Direction is transforming warehouse

operations NOW• The Future – integrated Voice and RFID• Using Innovation to expand your market• Conclusion


Agenda• Voice Direction compared and contrasted with RFID

• Voice Directed Picking live demonstration

• How Voice Direction works

• Programming in the Voice Direction environment

• Interfacing Voice Direction to OpenEdge 10 Applications

• How Voice Direction is transforming warehouse operations NOW

• The Future – integrated Voice and RFID

• Using Innovation to expand your market

• Conclusion




RFID vs. Voice DirectionRFID

Emerging technology

Needs specialist hardware

Transforms supply chain

Needs new Progress technology

Benefits being established

Passive technology

Positive ID of items

Voice DirectionMature technology

Needs specialist hardware

Transforms supply chain

Works with current core Progress technology

Well established benefits

Active technology

Requires operator intervention to ID items


Typical Supply Chain Operations


Operation Voice Only With RFIDPicking Operator checks goods

against ASN and confirms by Voice

Voice directs picker to location, RFID tag confirms correct pick

Goods Receiving

Operator checks goods against ASN and confirms by Voice

RFID reports delivery and compares to ASN

Put Away Voice directs operator to free locations, operator confirms locations by Voice

Voice directs operator to free locations, RFID confirms locations

Replenish-ment

Voice sends operator to bulk stock location, then to picking location, operator confirms location by voice

Voice sends operator to bulk stock location, then to picking location, RFID confirms location











• Conclusion


Demo












• Conclusion


BCP and Voice Direction• BCP has chosen the Vocollect system to provide

voice hardware

• Uses Talkman Development Environment

• Vocollect formed in 1987– Based in Pittsburgh, office in UK– 350 plus employees– Creators of Talkman Voice Recognition system and

developers of proprietary “Blue Streak” speech recognition– 120,000 terminals in use worldwide, 10,000 plus in the UK– Installations on 6 continents and 27 countries– 80% of Voice-Directed Warehouse market– Verticals include grocery, apparel, automotive,

pharmaceutical, convenience stores, stationary etc.




Voice Direction Technology• Talkman Unit (T5)

– Rechargeable battery.– Any spread spectrum RF

network.

• Headset• Scanner• Waist Mounted Printer• Rugged, can be used in

hostile environments• Works well in extreme

noise conditions


How does it work?• Operator wears a specialised Voice

Recognition computer (VRC)

• Order is loaded into the unit by RF

• VRC directs operator to the warehouse location and says how many to pick

• Operator confirms the pick

• Successful pick sent to Warehouse Management System by RF

• Stock is updated in real time




What if the stock is wrong?• Programming in the workflow app in the VRC

decides whether to:– Pick an alternative– Send a short quantity– Repick later

• And also alerts the Warehouse Management System in Real Time to the discrepancy


Voice Overview• Speech Recognition

– Enables a voice computer to convert its operator’s speech into text

• Speech Synthesis– Enables a voice computer to talk to its operator

• RF LAN Technology– Allows a wearable voice computer to

communicate, in real time, with remote information systems




• Transcribing human speech into text is critical• Attention needs to be paid to the size of the

vocabulary– Recognizing a single word from a vocabulary of

50,000 is much more difficult than from a vocabulary of 100

• For warehouse purposes, it must work well with highly variable and extreme ambient noise

• In early systems there needed to be a definite gap between words. Now speech can be continuous

Speech Recognition










• Conclusion




Programming the T5• The T5 can work mostly disconnected

• Visual programming environment allows you to program: – Prompts to the operator– Calculations– Storing data in variables– Making decisions based on

• Operator responses• State of internal variables and data from the server

– Getting data from the server– Sending data to the server– Waiting for a predetermined time


Here is a sample




Getting data from the serverLook Up Table (LUT)


Sending data to the serverOutput Data Request (ODR)




Code View










• Conclusion




Recommended architecture

Voice Server

Intermediate database

Warehouse Management

System

ApplicationDatabase

FTP serverVoice tasks andVoice profiles

Main applications

StatelessSocket task

Voice interfaceprograms

LUT

ODR

At startof a newtask

Orders,Substitutions,

Stockupdates, etc.


Why another box?• Technical reasons

– Isolates voice from problems on WMS– Improved performance– Simplifies the interface

• Commercial reasons– Allows the Voice software to be a separately

sellable module




Communicating with the T5• Once a task has begun, the T5 drives the

communication

• When it requires data, it requests a Look Up Table

• When it has data to send, it sends an Output Data Request

• Since both LUTs and ODRs can identify the task, operator, etc, the Progress socket application can be stateless


Code View












• Conclusion


Accuracy/ Productivity benefits• Safety benefits - Hands and eyes free• Increased accuracy – 99.9% plus is not

uncommon– Short pick – credit claims and margin lost– Over pick –transport and labour returns costs– Mispick – credit claim, lost margin, write off if over

shelf life

• 15% increase in productivity• Speed of work

– No return to office for next pick list– Faster recording of catch weights




Real Time Benefits• Real time updating of the main system

– Triggered let downs to reduce re-picks– Include PI in replenishment– Immediate action on stock errors– Improved service level – Reduced time investigating discrepancies


Admin Cost Benefits• Removes the cost of printing and distributing picking

documents• Remove cost of re-keying order amendments,

picking confirmations, and catch weights (1 in 15 key depressions is an error)

• Ability to change task priorities at a stroke• Training costs reduced

– Voice is more intuitive than keyboard based systems




General Benefits• When all the factors above are considered, a

Fast Return on Investment can be achieved– Some figures show a 6 month ROI– Then year on year savings

• We have pulled this together into a ROI calculator

• See our white paper on ROI:– http://www.bcpsoftware.com/solutions/voice/white

paper.php


BCP’s experience• Errors decimated

– In one wholesaler, in the first department Voice was implemented, there was only one picking error in the last 4 week period – an error rate of 0.0017%!

• Training costs decimated– New pickers can be fully effective within hours

• Productivity improved– All pickers are now as productive as the best

pickers used to be












• Conclusion


Integrated Voice and RFID• Wearable RFID reader

– Belt– Vest– Could eventually be incorporated into the

Talkman unit

• Short range – 3 feet, so only reads a few tags at a time

• Solves the problem of RFID “floods”

• Useful for detail work




The “Box in hand” problem• Primary R & D focus at the moment

• Replaces check digit or scanner identification of the “box in hand”

• Further efficiency improvements

• Even better accuracy

• Incremental palette building


Other applications• Background inventory checking

– Do a stock check automatically while the operative is doing something else

• Finding items in unstructured environments– E.g. Retail store stockroom– It’s easier to find things if you know they’re there!– Short range allows location by signal strength– Alternatively, locate relative to nearby items












• Conclusion


For Partners only!• Vertical markets are a double edged sword!

• You need end users to educate you in a vertical market

• They need an incentive to make this effort

• An innovative technology like Voice Direction gives them that incentive












• Conclusion


Conclusions

• Voice Direction offers:– Dramatic increases in productivity & accuracy– Dramatic reduction in errors– Fast Return On Investment– High level of acceptability with users

• Voice is complementary to RFID– RFID locates stock, Voice directs the picker– Voice can be an interim measure while RFID matures

• For Partners, Voice can widen your market




Questions


Thank you for your time!

[email protected]

http://www.vocollect.com


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