Voice-directed picking process
August 1st 2010

Zetes 3iV Crystal voice solution is improving warehouse operations for McCulla Ireland,providing the company with flexible, custom-pick processes that will strengthen both customer service levels and profitability

McCulla Ireland, an independent third party logistics provider specialising in the temperature controlled food industry, is believed to be the country's first food service distribution specialist to implement voice directed picking.McCulla has invested a six-figure sum to improve its warehouse operations with Zetes' 3iV Crystal voice directed work solution and Vocollect's Talkman T5 voice computers, VoiceClient and VoiceConsole.

Zetes is a pan-European provider of solutions and services for the automatic identification of goods and people and, with more than 800 completed projects serving in the region of 75,000 users, is regarded as a key player in the design and deployment of voice solutions.

Family owned McCulla operates a 9000m2 capacity distribution centre with three temperaturecontrolled zones and serves food service clients across Ireland including McNeil Nutritional, Benecol Ireland, Johnson & Johnson and Dale Farms. The company had previously operated its picking processes using hand-held terminals, but required a system that allowed the flexibility to tailor pick processes in line with each client's individual costing and billing operations.

"We were very impressed with Zetes, they understood our business processes and how voice would benefit a 3PL by helping us to deliver greater value to customers," said Ashley McCulla, managing director at McCulla Ireland.

He continues, "Putting in voice enables us to increase our KPIs and efficiencies to customers by getting more things right first time, which strengthens loyalty and satisfaction, but also reduces our cost base and improves profitability." McCulla expects to improve picking and dispatch accuracy levels to 99.5% and better, and will recoup its investment in voice within a very short time period.

Robert van Vliet, sales manager for Zetes Ireland, comments: "McCulla is a perfect example of an independent specialist that understands the importance of technology to remain competitive. They have a reputation as innovators in their field." "Voice is ideal for the 'cool warehouse', anyone confronted with the daily problems of perishable transportation and logistics systems will consider voice directed working to improve picking and dispatch accuracy," adds van Vliet.

A key factor in the decision to implement voice was the potential for McCulla to reduce the number of man-hours required to complete stock counts. The company will eliminate the requirement for bi-weekly stock counts and instead operate a perpetual inventory management system.

Zetes' 3iV Crystal voice solution will be integrated directly with the Accellos WMS, giving McCulla's management real time visibility of warehouse operations. The implementation will be completed in phases from July 2010, starting with the chilled warehouse. All of McCulla's clients will be benefitting from voice directed picking by November 2010.

Zetes' 3iV Crystal voice solution is designed to offer a wide choice of functionality, flexibility and integration capability to facilitate voice directed working, real time data capture and data visibility. The solution can be integrated with a wide range of back office systems and offers customers a rapid return on their investments. Zetes Industries is a specialist in the value-added solutions and services segment for Automatic Identification of Goods and People (Goods ID and People ID). These solutions use both emerging and mature technologies (barcode, voice recognition, RFID, smartcards and biometrics), and Zetes develops 'Solution Architecture Frameworks' to optimise the business performance of its private and public customers in a number of market segments.

Zetes' solutions are implemented in a range of business sectors, including production, transport, logistics, distribution, healthcare, finance, telecommunications and public services.

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