A leading food service provider has gone live with Cohesio Group’s Android Voice Tech Solution, becoming the first-ever company to implement this technology in Australia.
Centre State Food Service (CSFS), owned and operated by leading Galipo Foods, is a leading South Australian wholesale food distributor. Founded in 1982, CSFS is the first-choice supplier for hundreds of businesses across country South Australia.
From March 2020, CSFS is operating Cohesio’s Android Voice Tech Solution at three of its warehouses in South Australia, becoming the first-ever Australian company to introduce Android Voice for its warehousing and logistics operations.
The solution has enabled the food provider to radically simplify workflows, increase workload and better meet spikes in demand, offering CSFS the added advantage of being able to scale up and down without an increase in assets such as hardware.
In addition to being the first in Australia to implement this solution, this is also the first-ever food service company in the Asia Pacific region to use an Android Voice solution in a temperature-controlled environment.
Cohesio Group’s Android Voice Tech Solution offers CSFS operators the power of hands-free, voice-led technology with the addition of migration capabilities to all Android devices.
CSFS engaged Cohesio in September 2019 to explore similar technology solutions that Cohesio had implemented for its parent company, Galipo Foods. After initial discussions the business decided to go with one of Cohesio’s new Android Voice offerings, powered by the Honeywell Voice Guided Work Solution (GWS), and the project went live in March 2020.
“After initial reviews of the existing workflows, along with an in-depth process analysis, we determined that while an existing dedicated voice solution like at Galipo would meet CSFS’s requirements, there was significant opportunity to deliver further benefits with our newly developed Android Voice Tech Solution,” Paul Phillips, Senior Business Consultant at Cohesio Group said.
The Android Voice Tech Solution is cost-effective, scalable and can be supported and managed remotely. Cohesio has implemented the solution for CSFS to pick larger customer orders, batch pick for small orders, catch-weight capture and confirmation and a new consolidation pick process.
“This consolidation workflow allows for frequently picked items to be isolated and picked separately, allowing the driver to complete a secondary pick on their route. This reduces double handling and speeds up the picking process. The solution is spread across three temperature-controlled zones, ambient, chilled and frozen, and is the first of its kind on Android Voice in the APAC region,” Rizan Mawzoon, Head of Transformation at Cohesio Group said.
“As the market leader in voice technology, I am excited Honeywell Voice can continue to support its partners and customers, by providing more dynamic and scalable alternatives to our existing enterprise voice solutions,” Anthony Beavis, Regional Leader – ANZ at Honeywell Voice said.
CSFS delivers a high standard of service to its customers throughout South Australia and as a result was looking at ways to improve the experience for its customers.
“By working with Cohesio at Galipo Food’s distribution centre we managed to double our picking rates with its voice and AMR solutions. After this experience, we wanted to explore similar opportunities for efficiency gains at CSFS with Cohesio. The technology provider understands our business and therefore can adapt and offer solutions that are flexible and nimble. We knew that they would be able to deliver significant efficiency and productivity gains and we are absolutely thrilled with the solutions we now have at both our Galipo and CSFS sites,” Nathan Narayanan, General Manager at Galipo Foods said.
The Cohesio Android Voice Tech Solution has reduced lead times from order to delivery, while also increasing accuracy through its product imagery feature. The solution offers the picker the same image of the item that the customer sees when they order it, enabling the operator to identify products much faster and with increased accuracy.
“Our goal was to simplify and rapidly reduce the complex workflows and to increase workloads. We also wanted to empower our existing operators with an easy and flexible, but also scalable technology that could cater to our peak periods and additional operators when required. Cohesio managed to deliver all of our requirements in a very short implementation period and we’re extremely pleased with the initial application and final design,” Erik Skinner, Manager at CSFS said.
Based on the principles of voice-guided technology, Android Voice gives organisations the power to optimise and simplify operations including goods receiving, picking, replenishing and putaways. It also offers efficiencies when it comes to stocktake, inspection and maintenance and retail front-of-store operations. Cohesio Group is also a certified Android Zero Touch partner on Google’s zero-touch partner program. This means that all their design and development methodologies are certified by Google and the API integration automates the Android integration allowing users to be more productive and give Cohesio the ability be more proactive with support.