Pep Boys Boosts Warehouse Productivity with Voice-Directed ...



Overview

Country or Region: United States

Industry: Auto parts and service

Customer Profile

Pep Boys is the nation’s leading automotive aftermarket retail and service chain. Pep Boys has 593 stores and over 6,000 service bays in 36 states and Puerto Rico.

Business Situation

Pep Boys wanted to increase worker productivity at five regional distribution centers. Equipping personnel with Radio Frequency scanning guns yielded modest gains over a paper-based system, but not enough to justify the cost.

Solution

The Vocollect Talkman T2X®, a Microsoft® Windows® CE-based wearable computer running Voice Directed Distribution™ software, guides Pep Boys warehouse workers through order selection for greater accuracy, efficiency, and safety.

Benefits

■ 12% productivity increase over Radio Frequency guns; 21% productivity increase over paper

■ Increase in accuracy of .5%, resulting in annual savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars at each facility

■ Full return on investment in six months

IDON’T WE TYPICALLY LIST VERSION OF PRODUCT, TOOLS, ETC? | | |“The Windows CE-based Vocollect Talkman delivers the reliability and long battery life required by the industrial environment of our auto parts distribution centers.”

Jim Donahue, Manager of Supply Chain Systems, Pep Boys | |

| | | |The Pep Boys – Manny, Moe & Jack, is the largest automotive aftermarket retail and service chain in |

| | | |the United States, with total fiscal 2004 revenues in excess of U.S.$2.1 billion. Along with its |

| | | |vehicle repair and maintenance capabilities, Pep Boys also serves the commercial auto parts delivery |

| | | |market and is one of the leading sellers of replacement tires in the United States. Maintaining a |

| | | |high level of efficiency in warehouses is critical to the company’s success, which is why Pep Boys |

| | | |deployed wearable Vocollect® Talkman T2X® computers—running Microsoft® Windows® CE and Voice-Directed|

| | | |Distribution™ software—to increase productivity 21 percent and reduce errors .5 percent. |

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Situation

As the nation’s leading automotive aftermarket retail sales and service chain, Pep Boys – Manny, Moe & Jack, depends on technology to keep operations running smoothly.

Along with its vehicle repair and maintenance capabilities, the company also serves the commercial auto parts delivery market and is one of the leading sellers of replacement tires in the United States. As a result, the company’s parts distribution operation is critical to the overall success of Pep Boys. The warehouse system moves more than 75 million items a year, so even small increases in efficiency can have a large impact on the company’s bottom line.

Until recently, store order selectors—the team members who pick items off warehouse shelves and load them onto a pallet jack for shipment—relied on a paper-based system. The Warehouse Management System (WMS) would print out a pick list or replenishment request, which workers would pick up at a central location. Tickets were frequently misread, or workers would neglect to fill the entire order. Sometimes the wrong parts were selected.

To increase efficiency and accuracy, Pep Boys experimented with scanning guns that use Radio Frequency (RF) technology. Warehouse workers used the RF guns to scan the barcode of an item and assemble an order. But the RF guns were limited by a character-based line command interface. Additionally, the RF guns required workers to input item quantities using keystrokes.

Perhaps the most significant disadvantage was that a worker had to put his RF gun down on a suitable surface to have both hands free to pick an item. Not only were several costly guns lost this way, but it also interrupted workflow and created a serious distraction, occasionally leading to unsafe situations.

“There is a lot of activity and movement in a typical warehouse, so it’s paramount that team members have the ability to see what’s going on at all times,” said Jim Donahue, Manager of Supply Chain Systems for Pep Boys. “We were looking for a hands-free, heads-up solution that would allow a worker to accomplish his job both efficiently and safely.”

Solution

The distribution management team began researching and learning about potential solutions at tradeshows, seminars, and other industry events. Eventually, the team narrowed the field down to just two solutions: Vocollect® Voice® and a competitive offering, VoiceLogistics® from VoxWare.

After making a head-to-head comparison of features, the team believed that Vocollect could better meet their requirements. Vocollect is a global leader in Voice-Directed Work™. The Vocollect Voice-Directed Distribution™ application runs on a Talkman T2X® wearable computer based on the Microsoft® Windows® CE 5.0 operating system and the Intel® PXA270 XScale® processor.

“Our research indicated that the combination of Vocollect voice recognition technology and the Windows CE operating system provided the most reliable and efficient means of order selection,” said Donahue.

A three-month pilot program was initiated with ten Vocollect wearable computers. But the team received so much positive feedback about Vocollect Talkman in the first few weeks of the program that a decision was made to roll it out to all regional warehouse centers immediately.

Nearly 190 Vocollect Talkman T2x wearable computers were purchased for approximately 300 store order selectors in five regional distribution centers. The centers are located in Chester, NY; just outside Atlanta (McDonough, GA); just South of Indianapolis (Plainfield, IN); just east of Dallas (Mesquite, TX); and in San Bernardino, CA.

The belt-worn Talkman T2X wearable computers are often shared between shifts, but the SR Series® speech recognition headsets are typically dedicated to each individual. After 15 minutes of training their voice templates (profiles that capture individuals’ unique speech characteristics), workers are ready to be directed through each step of their assignment.

Assignments for order selection are generated by the host WMS and transmitted via IEEE 802.11 wireless network to the appropriate worker. The Vocollect Voice application translates the assignment into speech commands that direct a worker to an aisle/section and slot location.

Team members confirm the location by speaking a numeric identifier into their headsets. Vocollect Voice responds “Pick 3” or some other quantity. When the task is complete, the worker replies “3” to confirm quantity, and Vocollect Voice responds with the next assignment in the queue.

The impact of the Voice-Directed Distribution solution on the bottom line has been measurable. “By increasing warehouse efficiencies, we lower operating costs and improve profits margins,” remarks Donahue. “The enhanced margins, in turn, enable us to match up better with our biggest competitors.”

Compared to the paper-based system, Pep Boys measures a 21 percent increase in productivity with the Vocollect solution. Versus RF scanning guns, the productivity gain from using Vocollect is 12 percent, with an increase in accuracy of .5 percent.

“These increases in accuracy and productivity equate to annual savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars at each facility,” says Donahue. “In sum, we’ve seen a full return on the investment in just six months.”

Benefits

The Microsoft Windows CE 5.0 operating system, which lies at the heart of every Vocollect Talkman T2X computer, enables many of the benefits enjoyed by users of the device.

“The Windows CE-based Vocollect Talkman delivers the reliability and long battery life required by the industrial environment of our auto parts distribution centers,” says Donahue. “And integration with our Warehouse Management System was a breeze, thanks to Microsoft technology.”

Power for a Full Shift

Teams in a distribution center typically work an 8, 10, or 12-hour shift. Vocollect needed to make sure a Talkman T2X wearable computer could last a full shift before recharging the battery was required.

From its very first version, Windows CE has had built-in battery smarts. The Power Manager found in Windows CE 5.0 Platform Builder is a component that manages device power and improves overall operating system power efficiency.

"Battery operation is critical to the success of our products,” says Greg Holland, Hardware Product Manager for Vocollect. “We enjoy working with Windows CE because it gives us clear visibility into power states at an application level. That close coupling of power management functions and the Platform Builder development environment was critical to speeding our development process.”

Essentially, the development team at Vocollect was able to extend the Windows CE 5.0 Power Management model to interface with specific hardware components.

For example, Vocollect implemented the OEMIdle function to save additional power. When the kernel calls the OEMIdle function, the OEM device is requested to go into a sleep, or idle, state. This consists of saving the current state, placing the memory into a refresh state if necessary, stopping the clock, and suspending execution.

Integration with Warehouse Management System

Like many other Vocollect customers, Pep Boys chose to integrate the Vocollect solution with the company’s Warehouse Management System using internal development resources.

Vocollect provides a software product called VoiceLink with Direct Interface, which uses Windows Sockets technology to make integration seamless. Windows Sockets 2 (Winsock) enables programmers to create advanced Internet, intranet, and other network-capable applications to transmit application data across the wire, independent of the network protocol being used. With Winsock, programmers are provided access to advanced Windows networking capabilities such as multicast and Quality of Service (QOS).

“Using Windows Sockets enabled us to easily and quickly connect the Vocollect Talkman wearable computers to our mainframe warehouse systems,” says Donahue. “We have had no glitches or problems whatsoever with this interface.”

“We estimate that greater than 95 percent of our customers are using Microsoft technology for their business infrastructure, including the Warehouse Management System,” says Holland. “Companies that are Microsoft shops want to deal with a known element, not middleware from some unfamiliar company that may or may not be around in five years. Using a non-Windows technology would be quite problematic for us and would certainly result in a more difficult and longer sales cycle.”

Reliability – Shared Source Code for Debugging

Above all else, Pep Boys needed to have 100 percent reliability from the Vocollect solution. If the system stopped working for any reason, the entire warehouse operation would grind to a halt, resulting in significant financial losses.

Windows CE is designed to be a highly stable operating system. Part of that reliability comes from enabling developers to eliminate software defects that can cause system failure.

The Microsoft Windows CE Shared Source Program makes shared source code available at no cost in any version of Windows CE Platform Builder. This provides insight and a deeper understanding of Windows CE by giving users free access to millions of lines of Windows CE source code.

“We found the shared source code to be a significant aid in diagnosing any problem with our platform,” says Holland. “This helped ensure that the software quality met the demanding standards of Vocollect for performance and reliability.”

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“Our research indicated that the combination of Vocollect voice recognition technology and the Windows CE operating system provided the most reliable and efficient means of order selection.”

Jim Donahue, Manager of Supply Chain Systems, Pep Boys | |

“Integration with our Warehouse Management System was a breeze, thanks to Microsoft technology.”

Jim Donahue, Manager of Supply Chain Systems, Pep Boys | |

| |Software and Services

− Microsoft Windows CE 5.0

− Microsoft eMbedded Visual C++®

|Hardware

− Intel PXA270 XScale® (416 MHz)

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For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:



For more information about Vocollect, call (412) 829-8145 x6210 or visit the Web site:



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© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C++, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Document published December 2005

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