2009 Innovator: topVox #1

Hands-free operation has been one of the biggest benefits of the solution, according to Maehr. “Our employees are handling big cases and of fruits and vegetables and its difficult to use a scanner. With topSPEECH-Lydia, they can walk and talk, so it’s more ergonomic. Our average productivity range increased 10 percent. Our accuracy also increased, so there’s no longer a check at the SPAR stores we service. We now have about one mistake in every 5,000 picks.”

The solution has enabled SPAR to take on new business. “We were able to increase the number of SKUs we carried and stores we serviced without adding any employees,” says Maehr.

Walther Alben und Rahmen also reports a great deal of success with topVOX. “We’re using voice for pick and replenishment, and this solution has proven to be more effective than their competitors,” says Oliver Jordans, general manager, Nettetal, Germany.

“TopVOX was the only vendor who could work with hardware from HP, which we were already using. We wanted to buy standard hardware and use pocket PCs—we wanted to be able to replace any hardware on our own.”

Jordans says that, since using topVOX, its picking and replenishment is 99.99 percent accurate. At receiving, the company no longer needs to do quality control.

“The integration time was only four to five weeks and a huge issue for us was background noise, but that proved to be no problem with topVOX,” says Jordans.