INNOV1: RFID and Voice Perfect Partners

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INNOV-1 RFID and Voice Perfect Partners

• Brian Preece
• R D Director
• BCP Ltd

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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

3
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

INNOV-1 RFID and Voice - Perfect Partners
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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

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RFID vs. Voice Direction

• RFID
• Emerging technology
• Needs specialist hardware
• Transforms supply chain
• Needs new Progress technology
• Benefits being established
• Passive technology
• Positive ID of items

• Voice Direction
• Mature technology
• Needs specialist hardware
• Transforms supply chain
• Works with current core Progress technology
• Well established benefits
• Active technology
• Requires operator intervention to ID items

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Typical Supply Chain Operations
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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

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Demo
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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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Voice Overview

• Speech Recognition
• Enables a voice computer to convert its
  operators 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

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Speech Recognition

• 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

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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

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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

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Here is a sample
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Getting data from the server

• Look Up Table (LUT)

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Sending data to the server

• Output Data Request (ODR)

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Code View
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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

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Recommended architecture
At start of a new task
Warehouse Management System
Voice Server
FTP server Voice tasks and Voice profiles
Main applications
Orders, Substitutions, Stock updates, etc.
LUT
Stateless Socket task
Voice interface programs
Application Database
Intermediate database
ODR
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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

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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

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Code View
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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

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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

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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

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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

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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/whitepa
  per.php

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BCPs 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

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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

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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

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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

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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
• Its easier to find things if you know theyre
  there!
• Short range allows location by signal strength
• Alternatively, locate relative to nearby items

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Questions
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Thank you for your time!

• brian_at_bcpsoftware.com
• www.bcpsoftware.com
• http//www.vocollect.com