Ehrhardt Partner Group’s Jeff Grigg and Larry Klimczyk explain to MHD what plans the European logistics solutions provider has for the Australia and New Zealand market in 2024.
Ehrhardt Partner Group (EPG) continues to make its presence felt in the Australia and New Zealand region by updating its LYDIA Voice Solution, acquiring Greenplan, and doing much more.
Jeff Grigg, who’s worked in the supply chain industry for 40 years developing and implementing software and systems across ANZ, is now the Logistics Solutions Advisor at the German-founded company. Based out of South Australia, Jeff says he’s excited to raise the profile of EPG in the Australasian market and bring its warehouse management and voice solutions to local businesses.
Larry Klimczyk has worked in and out of Australia for almost 20 years. In this time, he’s been providing technology solutions in the distribution and supply chain space. This has included retailers, manufacturers, and transport companies. At EPG, he’s responsible for the Americas and Southeast Asia.
UPDATING AND ACQUIRING
Jeff will deal with commercial sales and help businesses identify logistics opportunities, gain value from the solutions they chose from EPG and implement them on an operational level.
“Our voice recognition software has some impressive AI components sitting under it,” explains Larry. “This means there’s zero training or learning time for the voice engine to recognise somebody’s voice. Operators aren’t wasting time having instructions repeated to them because LYDIA has mitigated this problem.
“Multi-language is a unique option. Via audio ouput and voice recognition, multi-language recognition increases usability and provides a big boost to employee recruitment and retention. This is a crucial advantage when it comes to collaboration in multi-national, seasonally fluctuating teams, as employees are simply able to respond in their native tongue. Users can simply put the headset on and become productive straight away.”
EPG has begun to incorporate AI technology learnings, thereby improving recognition and speed. Within the past two years, it’s implemented the multi-language feature into the LYDIA Voice Solution’s software. As soon as someone picks up the headset, it allows them to select their profile and to choose what language they’d like it to use.
“This is an enabler to tap into new sources of labour,” says Jeff. “We want workers to be productive and happy.”
EPG has expanded its supply chain execution suite by integrating a new product, called Greenplan, which is now also available in the Australian market. Greeplan is a route planning solution, offering a planning and execution platform for efficient and optimised transportation management. While this solution operates effectively on its own, it is designed as a flexible component that can seamlessly integrate into a customer’s existing Transportation Management System (TMS).
“We now have a convergence of much more data,” adds Larry. “It improves our processing power and assists customers when planning routes either for the day or in real-time – all while considering real-time traffic patterns.
“Not only are we looking at the road infrastructure, but we’re also looking at the traffic speed every 200 metres and every five minutes. We’ve found it may be more efficient – hypothetically speaking – to do a route clockwise at 10am, but if you’re doing that same route at 2pm, it might be more beneficial to do it anti-clockwise.”
He notes EPG’s objective with its customers is twofold – it’s figuring out how to deliver more items on time while reducing the costs. Greenplan addresses both of these issues where costs are sometimes decreased by 20 per cent, and on-time deliveries are improved by as much as eight to 10 points, which is important because in the transportation industry, a company is only as good as its last delivery.
When goods aren’t delivered on time, customers tend to change providers although they usually want their deliveries to be free.
“While we can’t promise to have the customers’ orders delivered for free, we do our best to ensure they’re delivered on time, and we’re also trying to get the lowest cost possible for the transport organisation.”
ADVANCING IN AI AND DATA
The primary secret sauce to the LYDIA Voice Solution is its software. While offering its own hardware solutions, EPG is also working with major hardware providers, such as Zebra, to deliver a cost effective yet robust technological hardware solution for their customers.
Even though LYDIA Voice has been hardware-independent since day one, EPG has invested in specific technology – both headsets and vest – for its LYDIA Voice Solution – which can be combined with its VOXTER mobile voice computer or a Universal Android device.
In March, EPG launched LYDIA Voice Wear Air, which is a much lighter weight headset and vest even though it appears more rugged than its predecessor. It has stronger speaker power, and an improved microphone. Additionally, the software has been upgraded to V9 – also known as 9.1.
“We’re making advances in both AI speed and multi-language recognition as well as the LYDIA Voice Co-Pilot, which is the ability for a supervisor or manager to listen to what a particular worker is doing so they can guide or train them,” says Larry. “Customers say it’s great because they can monitor productivity, and focus on workers who may need additional coaching.”
EPG has been developing and providing supply chain execution solutions for more than 30 years. It has a Gartner-recognised mature Warehouse Management System (WMS) available as one of its core offerings. “We believe there are opportunities for a world-leading warehouse management solution to be placed in the Australian market,” explains Jeff.
“Internationally, we’re placed fifth among the leading Warehouse Management Solutions. The widely-respected industry analyst and research firm, Gartner, has us as the leading challenger in its 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for WMS. Australians are starting to understand the value of our globally renowned solutions – and we expect we’ll gain further traction here.”
Besides leveraging partnerships, EPG will ramp up its plans to further grow its business in the ANZ region in terms of resources.
AUTOMATION AND COST REDUCTION
Automation is vitally important for both service quality and cost reduction. Gartner not only tracks EPG’s WMS, but it also tracks its Warehouse Control System (WCS). EPG has offered warehouse solutions for Level 4 and 5
warehouse operations for more than three decades. Being a hardware vendor-agnostic automation solution provider, EPG is ranked the number one for Automation by Gartner.
Larry notes Australian businesses are exploring what they can automate in their operations. “One of the big differentiators with EPG on our WCS is we’re completely hardware agnostic.
“If you want to futureproof your WCS, EPG can help without locking you into one type of robotics or one type of automation equipment. By using modern-day technologies to harness AI and data, we can create information that’s invaluable for businesses.”
Jeff adds that EPG looks after the administrative, operative, and automation side of warehouse management. “We have a supply chain control tower, that businesses can use to make the best decisions for themselves. AI has the potential to hugely enrich datasets, and we have the tools to interpret and dashboards to display them.
“The friction in the supply chain – the excess inventory, the just-in-case inventory – comes about due to poor information flows. The better information flows across the supply chain, the less what-if or just-in-case inventory we have.
“By using automation with higher and more reliable logistics data, AI is improving information, therefore making it possible for businesses to gain benefits for their bottom line.”
For more information on EPG, click here.