Voice picking brings cheers to Suncoast

Florida-based beer distributor Suncoast Beverage Sales, Ltd distributes more than 17,000 cases of beverages daily – 80% of which is beer – and approximately five million cases annually.

The company’s decision to switch from paper to voice picking was not taken lightly, and it had to be executed with minimal interference to the DC, which operates 16 hours a day, six days a week.

In conjunction with implementing voice technology, Suncoast also took the opportunity to update its IT systems, implementing Dematic’s Warehouse Control System (WCS), PickDirector.

With the software’s wide-ranging functionality spanning the entire warehouse environment – including picking, inventory control and shipping – it has helped to reduce picking errors, misreads and mistakes, and virtually eliminated expensive and time-consuming quality control procedures.

The need to automate
Suncoast is an Anheuser-Busch affiliated distributor and one of the top ten beer wholesalers in Florida. The company distributes to restaurants, bars, grocery stores, warehouse clubs and convenience stores in Fort Myers, Florida.

“We had been using a paper-based picking system,” said Tim Mitchell, President of Suncoast.

“It was a very slow and frequently difficult process with a high potential for mistakes, but was somewhat effective when we didn’t carry so many SKUs.

“Five years ago we handled less than 200 SKUs. Now we handle over 400.”

Beverage distribution characteristics
Beverage distribution – especially beer and carbonated soft drinks – is characterised by the predominant lack of a fixed SKU location scheme within the warehouse.

There is usually little racking, and most of the product is floor stacked two or three-pallets high.

The flow of product through a beer DC is extremely dynamic. The SKUs and their pick locations are in constant movement. Beer distributors typically handle fewer SKUs compared to retail DCs. A relatively small number of fast moving SKUs (10 or 15 items) can account for 80% of a beer DC’s case volume.

“As our SKU count increased and space became critical in the warehouse, we were looking at how to take the thinking process out of our receiving and replenishing functions, and the loading of our fleet,” explained Mr Mitchell.

“Our interest to automate picking escalated when we saw the Dematic voice picking solution in operation at a Pepsi DC nearby.

“We could see how this computer-based system did the thinking for the DC, and how it could increase efficiency and reduce labour hours in our warehouse.”

Dynamic picking with voice
Suncoast selected PickDIRECTOR for voicebased control of its picking, quality assurance, manifesting and truck loading – all operations that previously required paper-based, manual validation.

The voice picking system is fully configurable by Suncoast, enabling it to modify the pick sequence to adjust for volume fluctuations and the spoken description to the selector. These two features allow an unprecedented level of site control without requiring support from Dematic.

Voice in action at Suncoast
With no paperwork, operators pick with both hands, and tasks such as reading, writing, and searching for stock locations are eliminated. Pickers wear a portable, belt-mounted speech recognition device and a headset. The terminal communicates to the host computer via a traditional RF backbone.

“We have found that the scan-to-confirm method used by PickDirector allows for a first pass accuracy of 99.8%, which is exceptional,” said Dematic’s Technology Specialist, Tim Post.

“This meets all ASN (advanced shipping notice) targets out there. It raises accuracy to a level that ensures no difficulty meeting the inbound requirements of big box retailers.”

Improved order assembly flexibility
Supervisors can also rearrange the order in which routes are picked. PickDIRECTOR also directs the loading and reverse stop sequencing of the orders, and then ‘closes’ and certifies the loads on the trailer.

This process, combined with high picking accuracy, eliminates the wasted time associated with pre-delivery driver audits. Drivers arrive, pre-trip their vehicles and get on the road.

“Our old way of loading would have one worker loading one side-load truck at a time, which would take 90 minutes to load,” said Suncoast’s President Tim Mitchell.

“Now we can have three to four workers picking and loading one truck, which enables us to load a truck in 30 minutes or less,” he said.

Suncoast has increased accuracy and efficiency, reduced order errors, boosted case picking productivity by 20%, reduced numbers in the warehouse and cut truck loading time.

“We saw a major decrease in our errors in the warehouse going onto the trucks from night loading,” Mr Mitchell continued, “with our latest figures showing 99.9% accuracy.”

Suncoast is planning to expand PickDirector functions even further into its DC, with receiving and replenishment to be added at a later date.