Vocollect Voice Helps Tiendas Comercial Mexicana Distribution Centers Realize Productivity and Accuracy Improvements Across Multiple Workflows

Vocollect, a business unit of Intermec, Inc. (NYSE:IN) and the world leader in voice-enabled solutions for mobile workers, along with Mexico-headquartered partner NetLogistiK, today announced the successful deployment of Vocollect Voice at Tiendas Comercial Mexicana, S.A. de C.V., the third largest supermarket chain in Mexico. As part of Vocollect’s voice-enabled distribution center vision, Comercial Mexicana has deployed Vocollect Voice in the functional areas of picking, receiving, shipping/ line-loading and cross-dock/put-to-store. This implementation has helped the company realize productivity improvements of 25 to 50 percent and accuracy increases from 98 to 99.6 percent.

Founded in 1930, today Comercial Mexicana has 200 stores in six different formats serving over 50 cities across Mexico. It operates four distribution centers (DCs): national facilities for dry goods (538,000 square feet) and perishables (377,000 square feet) and two regional facilities. Currently the dry goods facility uses Vocollect Voice for picking and receiving and the perishable DC uses Vocollect Voice for picking, cross-dock/put-to-store, receiving, shipping/line-loading, and irregular picking.

Before Vocollect Voice was deployed, distribution center workers were not always following established internal procedures and processes. This resulted in too many incorrect orders, which then created customer service issues and affected the company’s tracking capabilities.

According to Carlos Ramos, corporate logistics director at Comercial Mexicana, "Our most important goal is to continuously improve our service levels to our 200 stores. We needed to become as efficient as possible in throughput and order velocity and accuracy. Vocollect Voice has helped us to meet and exceed our productivity goals and our customers have definitely noticed our faster and more accurate response times to meet their needs.”

Vocollect Voice has reduced worker training time from two weeks to two days. Picking productivity reached a 25 percent improvement over previous RF scanning handheld devices in the perishables DC and has climbed to more than 50 percent in the dry goods DC. The addition of a catch weight capture process realized a greater than 50 percent improvement over formerly manual processes. Order accuracy in the dry goods DC increased from 98 percent to 99.6 percent, which has had a tremendous financial impact with the volume of order processing. The company achieved a positive return on investment in less than 12 months, much earlier than anticipated and planned for by management.

"Comercial Mexicana has made great strides in enhancing customer satisfaction through the use of Vocollect Voice across multiple distribution workflows,” said Francisco Giral, chief executive officer, NetLogistiK. "The ability to interleave various workflow tasks through Vocollect Voice has helped the company minimize bottlenecks and reach a level of productivity to manage seasonal peaks with its existing workers.”

"We are excited to see the tremendous productivity and performance gains that Comercial Mexicana has experienced with Vocollect Voice,” said Carlos Kamimura, director of business development, Latin America, Vocollect. "More and more companies around the world are seeing the value of Vocollect Voice deployed across such areas as receiving, selection, put-to-store and line-loading.”

About Vocollect

Vocollect, a business unit of Intermec, Inc. (NYSE:IN), is the leader in creating and providing voice-centric solutions for mobile workers in distribution and warehouse environments worldwide. The speech recognition software and extreme recognition accuracy of in-vocabulary speech helps customers achieve a higher level of business performance through voice. Every day over 350,000 workers worldwide use Vocollect’s comprehensive voice solutions to distribute more than $3.5 billion in goods from distribution centers and warehouses to customer locations. A global team of over 2,000 supply chain reseller and channel partner experts supports Vocollect Voice offerings. Vocollect VoiceWorld Suite integrates with all major WMS and ERP systems, including solutions from SAP AG, and supports the industry’s leading mobile computing devices. For more information, visit www.vocollect.com. Vocollect^®, Vocollect Voice^® and Vocollect VoiceWorld Suite™ are trademarks of Intermec IP Corp. All rights reserved.

About Intermec

Intermec Inc. (NYSE:IN) develops and integrates products, services and technologies that identify, track and manage supply chain assets and information. Core technologies include rugged mobile computing and data collection systems, bar code printers, label media, and RFID. The company’s products and services are used by customers in many industries worldwide to improve the productivity, quality and responsiveness of business operations. For more information about Intermec, visit www.intermec.com or call 800-347-2636.

About NetLogistiK

NetLogistiK is a leader in providing experienced logistics consulting and best-of-breed supply chain execution software implementation services for Latin America. The mission of netLogistiK is to generate fast and lasting results in the extended supply chain – reductions in operating costs, improvements in service levels, increase in productivity and throughput – by providing the broadest and most comprehensive portfolio of logistics technology solutions combined with deep expertise in supply chain best practices.

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