MHW Magazine News and stories from the Materials Handling Industry
Voxware, the largest independent voice application company, has announced that Whole Foods Market saw productivity gains of 25-35% after implementing the latest version of Voxware’s voice solution in its largest Distribution Center (DC). The food retailer has expanded its deployment of Voxware Voice Management Suite (VMS) to its other nine DCs with scheduled completion in October 2014.
Prior to implementing Voxware’s voice technology, Whole Foods’ largest DC was typically performing at the network average of its ten DCs. After implementing voice, that DC saw selection rate increases that have them consistently performing at the highest levels in its network. Following the great results Whole Foods experienced with Voxware at its largest DC, the retailer implemented a plan to rapidly deploy the solution to its other warehouses.
“One of the best parts of our deployment of Voxware is that it’s a great partnership embodied by a strong spirit of teamwork,” says Jodie Carey, Global Distribution Operations Coordinator at Whole Foods. “Both companies are working collaboratively, and we’re continuing to see strong accuracy and productivity results while staying on target to be fully deployed across all of our distribution centers by October of this year.”
Whole Foods made the decision to implement Voxware VMS in order to optimize existing resources and allow them to increase the velocity of product through the DC.
“One of the best reasons for deploying voice in the warehouse is that it can help companies optimize what they already have and see huge productivity gains without making any other costly additions to their supply chain,” says Keith Phillips, President and CEO at Voxware.
Whole Foods ultimately selected Voxware over other voice solutions because of the flexibility of the software, which can adapt to warehouse management system (WMS) changes without requiring time-consuming customizations. Voxware VMS integrated seamlessly with the WMS that Whole Foods already had in place, speeding time to deployment.
