Sysco Guest Supply Leverages Vocollect Voice for Efficient Just-in-Time Deliveries
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Vocollect VoiceLink Enterprise Connector
- Vocollect SR-20 Headsets
- Vocollect A500 Mobile Devices
- Vocollect VoiceCatalyst
- Vocollect VoiceConsole Software
Tech Stack
- Voice Technology
- Warehouse Management System (WMS)
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)
- Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
Applicable Functions
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
- Logistics & Transportation
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Warehouse Automation
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- System Integration
- Training
About The Customer
Founded in 1979, Sysco Guest Supply is owned by Sysco Corporation, the global leader in selling, marketing and distributing food products to restaurants, healthcare and educational facilities, lodging establishments, and other customers that prepare meals away from home. Headquartered in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey, Sysco Guest Supply is the largest full-service provider of personal care amenity programs and room accessories to the lodging industry. The company services virtually every large hotel worldwide. And today, Sysco Guest Supply uses Honeywell Vocollect voice to help deliver on its promise to deliver good things to its customers.
The Challenge
The company’s key strategic business challenge is dealing with extreme peak volumes the first week of every month and during summer holidays. In the distribution side of the business, dealing with these peak times – particularly a fluctuating order velocity and the need for correct orders – is pivotal. But this is compounded by other needs. Typically, hotels have virtually no floor space to accommodate storing amenities; they rely on Sysco Guest Supply to manage their inventory in a just-in-time fashion and send them what they need, when they need it. And, like so many other companies, there is an ever-present need to do more with less. All of this has made Vocollect voice a natural fit.
The Solution
Based on industry trade information, Director of Distribution Jim Makowski started to see voice as the right technology to help him meet the enormous task of worldwide just-in-time deliveries. His technology partner Vitech Business Group recommended that he consider Vocollect voice. After a short pilot netted tremendous initial results, Makowski made the decision to move to Vocollect voice, and move fast. So fast, in fact, that in a one-year period he launched it into 10 distribution centers (DCs). Says Makowski, “After the design, configuration and testing phases, our first deployment took five days. I drove the other deployments myself, and they typically took only four days to become fully operational. We successfully completed all 10 Vocollect voice installations within nine months. This is a real testament to the ease of deployment and the power of a great partnership with Vitech and Honeywell.” Today a total of about 130 workers across 10 North American DCs use Vocollect voice for multiple workflows. The company moves about 13 million cases per year through Vocollect voice.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Remote Temperature Monitoring of Perishable Goods Saves Money
RMONI was facing temperature monitoring challenges in a cold chain business. A cold chain must be established and maintained to ensure goods have been properly refrigerated during every step of the process, making temperature monitoring a critical business function. Manual registration practice can be very costly, labor intensive and prone to mistakes.
Case Study
Hospital Inventory Management
The hospital supply chain team is responsible for ensuring that the right medical supplies are readily available to clinicians when and where needed, and to do so in the most efficient manner possible. However, many of the systems and processes in use at the cancer center for supply chain management were not best suited to support these goals. Barcoding technology, a commonly used method for inventory management of medical supplies, is labor intensive, time consuming, does not provide real-time visibility into inventory levels and can be prone to error. Consequently, the lack of accurate and real-time visibility into inventory levels across multiple supply rooms in multiple hospital facilities creates additional inefficiency in the system causing over-ordering, hoarding, and wasted supplies. Other sources of waste and cost were also identified as candidates for improvement. Existing systems and processes did not provide adequate security for high-cost inventory within the hospital, which was another driver of cost. A lack of visibility into expiration dates for supplies resulted in supplies being wasted due to past expiry dates. Storage of supplies was also a key consideration given the location of the cancer center’s facilities in a dense urban setting, where space is always at a premium. In order to address the challenges outlined above, the hospital sought a solution that would provide real-time inventory information with high levels of accuracy, reduce the level of manual effort required and enable data driven decision making to ensure that the right supplies were readily available to clinicians in the right location at the right time.
Case Study
IoT Solution for Cold Chain
Most of the customer's warehouses run on utility and generator power. Since these warehouses are in remote locations, power outages are a very common scenario. Diesel fuel, thereby, becomes a significant cost for these warehouses. Energy consumption was also very high due to the lack of a consistent temperature throughout the facility. This lack of a consistent temperature in all areas and no way to control it, resulted in the customer losing a significant amount of their temperature sensitive goods due to spoilage.
