Take the stress out of holiday logistics with vision picking

As the holidays approach, the pressure on logistics operations goes through the roof. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas shopping bring many orders, which means more work for the logistics teams to deliver packages on time.

This is happening in more than just the US or Europe. At the end of January, Chinese New Year is China’s most crucial holiday season. In a globalized economy, all this comes down to a stress test for warehouse and delivery workers. 

For employers, more packages also lead to more mistakes, delays, and costs. For example, wrong deliveries are more likely to be returned. This makes it even harder to stick to tight budgets, deal with issues in existing systems, and keep workers on board.

In Europe, projects like Logistics 5.0 can help to address these challenges. Sustainability and supply chain resilience are at its core. Another pillar focuses more on workers’ needs. Having the right tools in place can help boost worker satisfaction. 

This is where vision picking can play a crucial role. It uses augmented reality (AR) to make warehouse workers’ lives easier and their routines faster. It also helps them deliver your holiday season presents or any other goods on time.

In this article:

• Picking explained
• The benefits of vision picking during peak season
• One possible pitfall of digitalizing logistics
• How Coca-Cola uses vision picking to avoid bottlenecks
• Summary

Picking explained

Picking is the process of making goods available. The orders may vary, but the process is the same. If a customer buys a product from an online retailer, for example, this order is picked in the same way as an order from manufacturing to provide materials.

Warehouse workers have lots of different ways to process orders. Most logistics companies have already gone digital with the picking process. They use RF devices with integrated barcode scanners and a warehouse management system. This makes picking more efficient, cuts down on mistakes, and gets rid of paper lists.

The most basic step in digitalizing picking is usually called pick by scan. As mentioned above, a barcode scanner scans and confirms the pick. Other digitalized methods include pick by light and pick by voice. These are also paperless and improve warehouse working conditions by allowing pickers to have both hands free.

Vision picking, or pick by voice, has even more tangible benefits for workers. It is an AR-powered solution that runs on smart glasses and offers visual cues in the worker’s field of view while both hands remain free. This makes work easier, safer, and smarter. At the same time, it increases operational efficiency and drives down costs. The investment pays off very quickly with a high ROI.

The benefits of vision picking during peak season

Warehouses have limited storage space, so peak season depends more than ever on reliable order processing. It’s crucial to keep track of stocks and inventory. With so much turnover, mistakes can happen, resulting in more returns. Also, demand for same-day deliveries is higher during holidays, which adds even more stress.

With TeamViewer Frontline Pick, picking becomes guided, hands-free, and paperless. Workers love it because it fits in with their tasks and improves working conditions. This is important during peak season when you have a heavy workload and long hours. As a result, workers are more energized, which means less turnover.

With Frontline, instructions appear in the worker’s line of sight or come via headset. Plus, you can add inventory-keeping features like cycle counts into the picking flows. All this makes it easier to pick the right items, which means fewer complaints and returns. Fewer goods shipped back and forth means lower costs and better sustainability.  

Frontline Pick works with warehouse management systems such as SAP Extended Warehouse Management. It helps avoid siloed operations that can harm supply chains, especially during the holiday season or when facing unexpected surges in demand.

A recent ABI Research report backs this up by saying:

This might all sound too good to be true. But there is also a significant pitfall. Introducing new technology can sometimes become a “feature factory.” A company introduces tool after tool without focusing on what customers and workers need.

Remember when there was a goods shortage, and prices increased during the pandemic? It affected global supply chains. Entirely focused on efficiency and profits, whole industries were disrupted as they were put on a global resilience test. The same can happen during Black Week, Christmas, or Chinese New Year.

Frontline customers have avoided those pitfalls by planning for peak times. Let’s look at Coca-Cola HBC and how they leverage TeamViewer’s know-how across their operations.

How Coca-Cola HBC uses vision picking to avoid bottlenecks

Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (HBC) is one of the world’s largest Coca-Cola bottlers. It has 54 plants worldwide and makes all Coca-Cola products. Coca-Cola HBC uses TeamViewer Frontline to improve picking and other processes.

Given the high volumes they ship, even a 0.1% error rate can lead to 1,000 wrong deliveries. Rejected orders must be returned to the warehouse, and a new order must be shipped. This results in a spike in orders, slowing the entire operation and affecting business continuity. It can become a real bottleneck during peak times like Christmas when order volume and time pressure are at their highest.

Coca-Cola HBC’s decision to switch to TeamViewer Frontline Pick changed this. After only two months, the picking accuracy reached 99.99%. This means increased resilience in operations at any time and reduced costs.

Summary