Surpassing Business Goals with Vocollect Voice

Hong Kong-based Crown Logistics is a leading third-party logistics (3PL) service provider, serving the distribution needs of clients across industries including high-end prestigious fashion brands and accessories, cosmetics, skin care, healthcare and furniture. Stock-keeping technologies, professional time management processes and tracking visibility of freights are the core assurances it provides to clients, ensuring efficiency, security and peace of mind.

As a 3PL, Crown Logistics manages over 1,200,000 items, equivalent to more than 20,000 stock keeping units (SKU) per day in the Greater China Region.

Time is of the essence
With over 3,000 SKUs going through its 10,000 square foot (929.03 square meters) cosmetics warehouse, Crown Logistics has to manage multiple challenges every day to ensure timely delivery. The cosmetics industry also requires high order frequencies and a large number of SKUs, but only small quantities per order. The manpower needed to consolidate all of the orders is not significantly lower in comparison to that of processing orders in larger volumes, leaving little room for errors and corrections.

Distribution flexibility is also critical in the event of unexpected situations such as strikes, uneven demand and shortages – so that deliveries can continue uninterrupted to handle seasonal variations in product mix and volume. This system flexibility can be quantified by factors like the ability to handle special shipping instructions and requests to expedite shipments.

For products with tight expiry periods, picking has to be conducted on a First-Expired-First-Out (FEFO) basis. Time and resource management is, therefore, of strong importance for the warehouse operation. Inaccuracies in order processing or wrong order processing can account for huge losses, especially for those products with high retail value.
 
As its business expanded, Crown Logistics' resources became increasing taxed with its old system mix of barcode scanner and paper-based assignments. The picking process was awkward and slow, running contrary to its established goals for a successful 3PL.

There was a pressing need to reexamine its Distribution Center’s (DC) operations to ensure that the situation was rectified and future-proofed. The new solution would need to fulfill key operational objectives, including:

-    Enable accurate picking without extensive auditing
-    Increase accuracy
-    Improve productivity
-    Reinforce brand image by adopting leading technology in warehouse infrastructure
-    Increase end-customer satisfaction.

Into High Gear
To jolt its sluggishly-paced operations into high-gear, Crown Logistics decided to implement Vocollect's voice solution – which includes Vocollect Talkman® T5 Mobile Computing Devices, SR™ Series Headsets as well as VoiceLink®, a middleware that seamlessly integrates with Crown’s Warehouse Management System (WMS).

The warehouse implementation process was completed in less than three months, and the warehouse has been voice-directed since September 2010. Within a year of using Vocollect Voice, employees smoothly and swiftly pick more than 300,000 units of items monthly for deliveries to over 100 retail locations. The warehouse is operational six days a week and runs one shift a day, with three to four full-time order selectors.

"Productivity and resource management are now greatly improved. An example would be the hands-free and eyes-free advantage of Vocollect's equipment. Workers are able to focus on the tasks at hand without having to look at pages of order forms, or punch numbers onto a mobile device. This not only saves time, it eliminates errors and improves safety. All of which translates into better warehouse management," said Mr. Analdo Li, General Manager of Crown Logistics.

Results Realized
Within just 12 months after implementation, the impact of Vocollect Voice on Crown Logistics’ bottom line has been significant. One of the benefits the company quickly noticed was in inventory and order accuracy. When the Vocollect Voice system became operational, the first three months of performance were monitored. Crown found that its order selectors had already achieved an all-time high performance standards of 99.99% accuracy, far exceeding the 99.9% bar that the company set for the deployment.

Another contributing factor to increased accuracy lies in the Vocollect system's ability to withhold a command until the worker confirms the correct order by reading the assigned check digits at the storage location. This way, the system can monitor where the picker is, what tasks have been completed and what the next assignment will be.

This level of accuracy and efficiency of picking is of particular importance to a cosmetic retailer, as it requires validation of the expiry date in First-Expired-First-Out (FEFO) operation. This helps them to control product aging, thus reduce write-off. Vocollect Voice supports this additional requirement and is able to instruct the order selector accordingly.

Analdo says, “Real-time visibility of warehouse activities has improved and managers now have a clear sense of manpower required to complete the orders. Vocollect's real-time interface also helps us identify lapsed times for tracking.”

He adds, "Voice technology has given us an edge over our competitors. As a 3PL, we can now confidently make competitive service level commitments on order turnaround and error rates, which are vital gains that allow us to deliver superior service to our customers."

Staff management-wise, the training time required for order selectors to get up to speed on the distribution floor has also been significantly reduced. Overall training costs have also declined, as workers can receive commands and respond to the system in their native language (Cantonese).

Another benefit of using the hands-free, eyes-free Vocollect Voice solution is increased productivity through personalized voice-directed dialogues; this creates a more focused environment for the picker with no distractions and improves accuracy and overall safety.

Productivity in general has also improved by at least 10%, over-and-above the mentioned benefits, much of which can be credited to better time and resource management. This resulted in an overall improvement in customer satisfaction levels. The company also reached its ROI in less than one year.  

Based on these successes, the 3PL plans to expand its usage of Vocollect Voice to other areas of operation, including replenishment and put-away applications, and Crown also is evaluating implementing voice in its other Hong Kong DCs.