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topVox 'Hears' The Cry For Low-Cost Voice Solutions

Voice–directed picking solutions have come a long way over the past 10 years. Thanks to continual improvements in its capabilities, such as being able to better “hear” workers voices and screen out background noises, coupled with a quick payback and as much as a 50 percent reduction in errors, the use of voice technology has become common in today’s food and beverage warehouses.

While the voice technology playing field in the United States has been dominated by a couple of leading solution providers, a small European company has slowly and stealthily developed a loyal client base in North America, Mexico and beyond.

That company, topVOX Corp., a subsidiary of the German company TopSystem, is the European market leader in voice technology. In recent years, however, firms such as third-party logistics provider ODW Logistics Inc. in Columbus, OH; Cooper-Booth Wholesale Co., a convenience store and restaurant distributor in Pennsylvania; and Bepensa, a Mexican distributor for Coca Cola beverages, have chosen solutions from topVOX.

What sets TopVOX’s solution, topSPEECH-Lydia, apart from its competitors, says Andreas Finken, president and general manager for the company’s North American office in Barrington, IL, its system was the first hardware independent solution available on the market, meaning that the software can run on any device, regardless of vendor.

“Hardware from different manufacturers, such as Symbol, Intermec and LXE can be used, allowing our customers to select both their devices and operating systems from a competitive market, according to their specific preferences,” says Finken.

Another key differentiator is that topVOX features an open standards architecture, so it can integrate directly with standard warehouse management systems (WMS), including SAP, MARC Global and RedPrairie, and easily integrates into these solutions. Mobile units using topSPEECH-Lydia are easily linked to the WMS as they require no middleware.

These capabilities drastically reduce start-up costs for companies that are implementing a voice solution, as topVOX can literally work with any existing WMS as well as any hardware that may already be in use. Further, a company can choose which voice-capable hardware vendors they would prefer to work with, and make decisions based on durability, price, etc.

“Another plus,” says Marceline Absil, topVOX’s vice president of sales and marketing, “is that topSPEECH-Lydia offers speaker-independent speech which eliminates the need for new workers to ‘train’ the system to their voices. This greatly reduces the amount of time takes for the system to recognize the workers’ voices.”