Six pallets used to take five to six hours to ship. The picking took minutes. Capturing serial numbers took the rest.
This is the story of a retail distributor that had to record every serial number on every high-value item it shipped, and how AccuSpeech barcode parsing automation cut that six-pallet job to about 30 minutes. That 30 minutes is mostly forklift travel time.
The challenge: every serial, on every pallet
The customer must capture the serial number of every high-value item that moves from its warehouse to its retail stores. That rule is simple. Following it was not.
Pallet picks had to be taken apart. Stores often ordered full pallets of high-value product, so the warehouse picked them as pallet picks. But each item’s serial barcode was on the outside of its own box. To scan them, workers broke down the pallet, scanned every carton one by one, then rebuilt and rewrapped the pallet before it could ship.
Each picks had the same problem. Individual items also needed every barcode scanned, and sometimes those barcodes were missing or unreadable.
The vendor fix created a new problem. The customer asked its vendors to put large 2D barcodes on each pallet, each holding many serial numbers. One pallet could carry four of them. But there was no standard format. One vendor separated serials with spaces, another with line breaks, another with commas, slashes or other characters.
The serial numbers were all there, in one scan. Getting them from that scan into the WMS reliably was the hard part.
Why the usual fixes didn’t work
The customer runs Blue Yonder’s web-based WMS. Its RF scanning could only accept one serial barcode per scan, so pickers had to scan every serial individually. That meant breaking down the pallet, scanning each serial number one by one and rebuilding the pallet.
To work around it, the customer built a fixed scanning station at the staging location, running a custom JavaScript scanning tool. A dedicated person scanned each pallet’s 2D barcodes there with a programmed wired scanner. It was slow and inconsistent: only about 50% of scans captured successfully, so the team had to audit the serial number capture on every pallet before it shipped to the retail store.
The data was on the label and the WMS had a screen waiting for it. The gap was everything in between: reading the barcode, working out the delimiter, and entering each serial where the WMS expects it.
The AccuSpeech solution: barcode parsing automation
AccuSpeech solved this with the RF scanners the operators were already using for pallet picking. No fixed station, no extra person and no new hardware were needed. AccuSpeech barcode parsing automation runs on those existing devices and works with either the RF unit’s built-in scanner or a paired Bluetooth scanner. It sits on top of the existing Blue Yonder screens, and the WMS didn’t need any changes.
This is how a pallet pick works now:
1. The WMS directs the forklift operator to the pick location.
2. The operator confirms the pick by scanning the location barcode and then the pallet ID, and the WMS opens its serial number capture screen.
3. The operator scans one of the pallet’s 2D barcodes.
4. AccuSpeech reads the barcode and checks for every delimiter it might contain: spaces, line breaks, commas, slashes and others. It then splits out each serial number.
5. AccuSpeech enters each serial into the WMS serial capture screen one by one, exactly as if it had been scanned by itself. A barcode holding 50 serials is done in about 35 to 40 seconds.
6. AccuSpeech alerts the operator that the barcode is complete, and the operator scans the next one.
Scan before you drive. The RF scanners used for these transactions were Honeywell CK67s, so operators could scan the pallet’s barcodes from the forklift before driving to staging. Four barcodes can hold 200 to 250 serial numbers, and with each barcode entered in under a minute, serial capture is finished by the time the pallet reaches staging.
Nobody breaks down the pallet, scans individual cartons or rewraps anything. The pallet leaves the location intact and arrives at staging with every serial already in the WMS.
Both earlier approaches added manual steps after the pick. With AccuSpeech, serial capture becomes one scan on the forklift.
The real differentiator: parsing any barcode, any way you need
Serial capture was the problem this customer brought us. Barcode parsing is what solved it, and it isn’t limited to serial numbers.
With AccuSpeech, it doesn’t matter what kind of barcode the operator scans. Whatever the scan contains, AccuSpeech can break it apart and use the data exactly the way the customer’s process needs:
• Split it however the data is built. Spaces, line breaks, commas, slashes or a mix of them, from one vendor or many.
• Put it into any WMS field. Parsed data can go into any input field in the WMS, wherever that screen or field is. AccuSpeech automates the navigation to get there and enters the correct value in each field, as if it had been keyed or scanned on its own.
• Hold it for later. Parsed values can be saved to temporary storage and used in a later step of the workflow, instead of being entered right away.
• Shape the workflow around it. The parsing can direct what happens next, like alerting the operator when a barcode is complete and prompting the next scan.
How auto-navigation works
AccuSpeech automation is built from defined actions. Each action knows which WMS screen to open, which field to fill and which parsed value belongs there. Once the operator scans, the automation runs the actions in order:
1. Start from the workflow screen. The operator is on the screen where the transaction begins, such as the pick or serial capture screen.
2. Navigate automatically. AccuSpeech moves to whichever screen and field needs the data, even if it sits on a different screen from the one the operator is on.
3. Fill automatically. It enters the correct parsed value into each field, one field or one serial at a time.
4. Return to the start. When the data is in, AccuSpeech brings the operator back to the screen where the workflow started, so the transaction carries on as normal.
The operator never has to click through menus or hunt for a field. They scan once and keep working, and the automation takes care of every screen in between.
When a barcode is missing or can’t be scanned
Occasionally a barcode is damaged, unreadable or missing entirely. Stopping the pick to chase down serial numbers would undo the time savings, so AccuSpeech added a spoken command for it: “generate” followed by the number of serials the WMS still needs. If Blue Yonder rejects 5 serials from a damaged barcode, the operator says “generate 5 serial.”
When the operator says it, AccuSpeech takes the item number from the WMS and adds 8 randomly generated digits to the end of it. It creates as many of these serial numbers as the WMS needs to complete the transaction, so the workflow keeps moving.
Operations doesn’t have to wait to find out. Each time an operator uses the generate command, AccuSpeech sends an alert to a real-time dashboard. The alert shows:
• the pallet ID
• the item number
• how many serial numbers were generated by the voice command
Because every generated serial starts with the item number and follows a recognizable pattern, the operation can easily see which items shipped without a true serial number. The team uses that list to work with vendors so the real serial numbers are available when future shipments are received.
That is what makes AccuSpeech parsing different. It can be as creative, as directive or as specific as an operation requires, and it works without changing the WMS or asking vendors to change their labels.
Results: from 5 to 6 hours to about 30 minutes
In a side-by-side test of six pallets, the old process of breaking down each pallet, scanning every barcode individually and rebuilding the pallet took about 5 to 6 hours. With AccuSpeech, the same six pallets took about 30 minutes.
Why it matters beyond this customer
Many warehouses face a version of this problem. Vendors label product their own way, and the WMS expects data in one exact format. When the two don’t match, people fill the gap by hand.
AccuSpeech works on top of the WMS screens a warehouse already runs, whether they’re web-based like Blue Yonder or terminal-based. That means it can adapt to the data as it arrives. The customer didn’t have to force every vendor onto one barcode standard, and didn’t have to wait for a WMS change.
See what AccuSpeech can do for your operation
Want the full technical detail? Our white paper, Barcode Parsing Automation for Serial Number Capture in Pallet Picking, covers the solution architecture, parsing logic, auto-navigation, exception handling and deployment requirements. Register on our site to download the free white paper. [Link to the registration page]
Serial capture is just one example of what AccuSpeech automation can do on top of the WMS and devices you already run. If your team is interested in learning more about AccuSpeech’s capabilities, call us to schedule a FREE proof of concept (POC) in your own operation
