Voice rollout across 92 Coca-Cola bottling sites

The Ehrhardt Partner Group (EPG) has boosted its reputation with the successful rollout of its LYDIA™ Voice technology to 92 CONA locations, a total that is set to rise to over 100. CONA is the IT services company for the Coca-Cola bottling business in North America, with over 160,000 sales orders and an average of 30000 users per day. Its implementation and rapid rollout of LYDIA™ Voice is a fantastic endorsement for EPG, the Germany-based global supply chain software provider and voice picking innovator.

“LYDIA Voice is the best thing we have ever rolled out to the warehouse. Where has it been these last five years?” This is the valuable feedback coming directly from the bottlers of Coca-Cola who use EPG’s software on a daily basis. And this user experience is backed up by a number of facts. According to CONA, LYDIA Voice has brought productivity gains of up to 7% as well as clear voice recognition, the elimination of voice template training, and a more coordinated system architecture compared to the previous voice system. “The implementation of LYDIA at Coke One North America is of enormous significance for us,” emphasises Marco Ehrhardt, President of EPG. “The rollout to the 92 locations was completed in just twelve months.”

Consistency and clarity

CONA recognised the need to consider new voice solutions in 2019. Its previous system was prone to weak or intermittent connections. CONA required a solution that would al-low for continuous picking – independent of the network connection – should the Wi-Fi signal be weak or lost.
“Our previous voice system had a complex architecture and required the software to be hosted and run on individual servers at each deployment site,” explains Baron Jordan, CONA Chief Product Officer, Supply Chain. “There were also issues concerning inconsistent voice recognition.”

After an intensive eight-month investigation by CONA and a real-world test against an-other provider, LYDIA Voice emerged as the clear winner due to being able to meet all the tough requirements of Baron Jordan and his team. LYDIA Voice immediately resolved the architecture and support challenges across the 92 bottling sites thanks to its ability to directly integrate with SAP via a remote function call (RFC) without middleware.

The solution also offers an unsurpassed level of voice recognition, which is enabled by its deep neural network voice recognition. Training requirements are swept away altogether due to its immediate ease of use and its versatility. LYDIA is able to recognise more than 50 languages and a multitude of dialects.

A further advantage of the product is that it is device-independent, meaning that each location can select its preferred mobile voice device according to environment or preference. Customised adaptions in the voice dialogue can be independently created by the customer without having to call on EPG technicians or developers.

https://www.lydia-voice.com/gb/voice-know-how/case-studies/cona-services-success-story/