Associated Wholesale Grocers (AWG), the second largest grocery cooperative in the nation, implemented Vocollect's voice-directed distribution system in its 1 million square-foot Kansas City, Kan., facility, replacing both paper pick lists and hand-held scanning terminals in its case-picking operations. The payback was under one year's time and error rates dropped 25% following the installation.

"AWG has always used technology to improve its operations and provide better service to our retail customers," said Rich Vastine, AWG's corporate director of industrial engineering. "Previously, we went from paper to bar code scanners to increase accuracy rates, but lost productivity. Now, with voice, we get both benefits. A hands- and eyes-free operation is such a natural way for our associates to work. They're more alert now and working more efficiently - smarter, not harder.”

The system pairs Vocollect's industrial speech recognition technology with its wearable Talkman voice computer, running Microsoft Windows CE and 802.11b WLAN technologies. It was integrated with AWG's existing technology infrastructure.

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