Voice picking

An operator holding a trolley with both hands cannot look at a screen. Voice guidance reads out the information that would otherwise have to be read from the screen.

What is read out

• which bin to walk to,
• which cart shelf a scanned item belongs on,
• when a bin is finished,
• the exceptions: product out of stock, code not recognised, line already complete.

Each of these is a separate kind of announcement, and Guidance: what it says decides which ones are spoken. All kinds are read out until one of them is switched off; the order number read out at every bench is the most common one to switch off. → Packing settings

Guidance follows one device

The same run open on a desk and on a tablet is still the work of one person, and the guidance follows the device that is being worked from. The other screen does not speak, so the same bin is not announced twice. → Which device is working on it

Two kinds of voice

Browser voice — the voice built into the browser. It works out of the box, with no configuration and no cost. It sounds mechanical, but it reads location names and numbers clearly.

AI voice — sounds natural, and needs the AI extension: it holds the text-to-speech model, the clip library in which every phrase is kept after being generated once, and the settings behind both. → The AI voice

Without that extension the browser voice is the only one available, and it is sufficient for voice picking from the first day.

When voice guidance is useful

• Working with a trolley or a hand scanner, where the screen is far away.
• Warehouses with long routes, where “bin finished” saves a walk back to the screen.
• Onboarding a new operator: the voice states what to do before the layout of the hall is known.