PJH Group Targets 100% Picking Accuracy with Solarsoft Voice Technology

PJH Group, one of the largest European distributors of bathrooms, kitchens and appliances to the home improvement market, has placed a £150,000 order with Solarsoft Business Systems for new voice picking software and Psion Teklogix WORKABOUT PRO units.  The new system will enable PJH to aim for 100% picking accuracy and increase the number of picks per day by as much as 10%.  By removing manual warehouse processes, staff training time will also be reduced from several days to a matter of hours. 

Formed in 1972, PJH Group delivers over £150 million worth of stock to their customers on an annual basis. Solarsoft’s new voice picking solution will initially be rolled out at PJH’s National Distribution Centre in Enfield, which is focused entirely on distributing stock to B&Q stores. By automating its warehouse operations, PJH will able to further improve its delivery service to all customers.

With upwards of 18,000 items picked each day in PJH warehouses, voice technology will increase the productivity of staff and give the company more speed and flexibility in its warehouse operations. Using speech recognition and speech synthesis, the voice solution will allow PJH workers to communicate with the warehouse management system, also provided by Solarsoft. Wearing Psion Teklogix’ WORKABOUT PRO multi-modal unit with a headset, warehouse operatives will be able to receive picking instructions and verbally confirm their actions back to the system, while keeping their hands free.

David Johnston, IT Director at PJH Group, says, “The new voice picking solution from Solarsoft will help us achieve a considerable productivity increase and we expect to see a reduction in picking errors to close to zero. Throughput will increase significantly because pickers can simply recite their picks into the voice system, without interrupting proceedings to remove gloves to scan barcodes or complete paper forms. As a result, we will be able to increase the number of picks per day by as much as 10%. The software will also help us to move towards central control of our warehouse operations, rather than relying on employees’ memory and inside knowledge for the location of stock.”  

Johnston continues, “Mis-picks are very costly - from handling calls from customers who have received the wrong goods, to paying for those goods to be returned, and then re-picking and re-transporting goods. And then of course there is the fact that payment is delayed whilst the customer waits for the order to be fulfilled correctly. By eliminating mis-picks, we will be able to significantly reduce the admin burden on the business, simultaneously helping our cash-flow.” 

Another benefit of Solarsoft’s voice picking software is that the system has multi-lingual functionality. As PJH employs a diverse workforce to manage its warehouse operations, this means that staff can be trained on parts of the system in their own language and they can input voice commands in whatever language they choose.   

Once the voice picking solution has been implemented at PJH’s Enfield site, phase two will involve rolling out the technology at the company’s other sites.