CERP Bretagne Nord has chosen Zetes to equip its local depots with a voice picking system combined with datamatrix code scanning.
The CERP network is made up of three different companies and some sixty local warehouses, and is one of the leading pharmaceutical distributors in France.
Daniel Galas, president of CERP France and managing director of CERP Bretagne Nord, said: “Going for voice will enable us to maintain the levels of productivity required by our business needs in terms of order preparation while simultaneously reducing the margin for error.”
A pharmacy which places an order in the morning is supplied that same afternoon. Orders sent in during the afternoon are delivered before the pharmacy opens its doors the next morning.
To meet these requirements more effectively, the organisation decided to replace its paper-based order preparation system by a wireless voice solution, opting for the Zetes 3iV Crystal system, which uses the MCL-Voice recognition engine for this project and is set to be put in place on Motorola MC3190 terminals.
This will be deployed in all of the company’s local warehouses, which have several hundreds of operators.
Moreover, during order picking operations, each product is individually scanned using a wearable ring scanner to capture the datamatrix codes. This step has been integrated for the purpose of verification and to meet the requirements in connection with the traceability of pharmaceutical products in France.
The system sends out the appropriate picking instructions by voice, to the picker, who prepares the order lines and sends back information by the same way. The 2-D ring scanner allows the goods to be scanned as the order picker works his way through the order to check the preparation and to record the batch references and the use-by dates.
Galas said: “We were aware that the Zetes teams specialised in voice and that they were intimately familiar with the requirements that exist in our sector of industry. Which is exactly why we decided to call on Zetes. Together with Zetes, we are currently examining the further deployment of the system in a wider number of warehouses across the group.”
