November 2002

The European market for voice recognition systems in logistics is now worth a potential £50 million a year, according to Pittsburgh-based specialist Vocollect; and within five years the figure could rise to £500,000, it says. Vocollect already claims to hold 80 per cent of the market, but has now mounted a campaign to reinforce its presence in the UK and Europe, and aims to grow here at a rate of 40 to 50 per cent a year for the next two or three years.

As part of this initiative the company has set up a UK office and appointed a managing director for European operations. He is Greg Tanner, who has long experience in the auto-identification market.

"It's difficult to judge the real market potential," he said at an event to mark the new drive, "but users typically achieve payback within six to twelve months, so it's a highly attractive proposition."

Existing customers include Campbell's Soups, Carrefour, C&A, Frigoscandia, P&O and Wal-Mart. Other big names such as Tesco are also said to be exploring the opportunities. The biggest deployment in Europe so far uses 70 to 80 voice recognition terminals, although some installations in the US use 300 or more.

Tanner says most customers justify the investment purely in terms of improved picking accuracy, but then find additional benefits in terms put-away, speed of operation and being able to provide instruction to multi-lingual staff in their own language.

Vocollect supplies its own "wearable" Talkman voice recognition terminals, which run a heavily-tailored version of the Windows CE operating system for portable devices. They are sealed for operating in harsh environments, and have Flash memory so that their internal software can be upgraded automatically over a radio-frequency network. There is also a range of peripherals which include standard headphones, cupped versions for use in cold stores, and a hard-hat variant. Batteries offer either four to six-hour life between charges or eight to nine hours.

The company uses a proprietary speech synthesis engine, which is considered to give it more flexibility than rival systems working on a "record and playback" basis (where pre-set messages have to be taped by a human to cover all envisaged requirements). Its software is independent of any specific warehouse management system, and is said to be easy to integrate with most modern WMS packages. Native interfaces are already offered for several.

Following problems encountered earlier this year by rival Syvox, Vocollect has seen a further market opportunity open up, although Greg Tanner says the company "needs competition to help build up the market."

In the past Vocollect has sold its range in Europe through distributors, and that arrangement is set to continue. They include VoiteQ in Britain and Blackbird in Ireland. Tanner says more could be added later, although these two are thought to have sufficient resources for the foreseeable future.