Catalogue giant JD Williams has gone live with Dematic’s pick-to-voice system at its Shaw site near Oldham, which is expected to reduce pick errors by 65 per cent.
JD Williams operates more than 20 catalogue brands, including Oxendales, Ambrose Wilson and Shapely Figures, which offer a range of clothing and other products. The company’s transport and logistics division, Fulfilment Logistics, operates two main sites totalling 1.5 million sq ft.
The Shaw facility occupies 500,000 sq ft across two buildings both with four floors which are joined by a bridge.
Items are picked on all eight floors and put on a sortation machine for onward delivery.
The label-based picking system used previously has been retained as it is vital for sorter identification, but pickers are now directed to the pick location by voice. Upon arrival at their destination they are required to verbally verify unique check digits on the item being picked.
Dematic has implemented a Vocollect system incorporating Talkman hardware and customised VoiceLink software which interfaces with the JD Williams mainframe system.
It has also introduced its own software which splits picks into manageable assignments and a dashboard providing screen-based reporting of the whole pick operation.