Vocollect's Talkman System Installed At K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc.; Warehouse Sees Great Results with Voice-Directed System

Business Wire, Dec 10, 2001

Business Editors

PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 10, 2001

Vocollect, the leader in voice-directed distribution applications, today announced the successful completion of a Talkman(R) system installation at K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc.'s Mid-Mountain Foods warehousing and distribution facility, in Abingdon, Va.

K-VA-T Food Stores owns and operates 86 Food City supermarkets in the Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee region. Mid-Mountain Foods, which is also owned by K-VA-T, is the largest grocery distribution center in its geographic area.

K-VA-T Food Stores is the first Vocollect customer to utilize Talkman QuickPick(TM), a new system designed to voice-enable any warehouse picking operation quickly and easily. QuickPick creates a real-time picking solution that boosts the capabilities of any batch warehouse management system. Some of the benefits of Talkman QuickPick include: installs in just days; allows supervisors to instantly react to changing distribution needs through real-time data; manages product shortages as they occur; eliminates manual reconciliation and invoicing corrections; and captures picking activity information including assignment times, end times and status.

Paul Widener, distribution systems manager at K-VA-T Food Stores, said that he had no doubt that a Talkman system would work great for them. "They (Vocollect) had done a pilot program where they ran the Talkman system live for 60 days to gather test data," he said. "It considerably exceeded our expectations."

Some of the early results K-VA-T enjoyed with Talkman include:

-- 67% increase in picking accuracy in the perishable warehouse

-- 90% increase in picking accuracy in the dry warehouse

-- 8-10% overall increase in productivity

According to Widener, once the pilot program was completed, it took "only about three weeks" to install the system, train 150 order selectors and get them up and running. Currently, K-VA-T uses its Talkman system in its dry, perishable and cigarette areas of its warehouse space. Plans to install more Talkman terminals in the company's HBC space are scheduled for early 2002.

The demand for voice technology in the warehouse has grown by more than 50% annually over the past several years. Vocollect, the leader in voice-directed distribution applications, accounts for nearly 90% of those systems in use today.

About K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc.

Food City is owned and operated by K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc., headquartered in Abingdon, Va. K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc. is comprised of 86 supermarkets throughout the tri-state region of Southeast Kentucky, Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee; and Mid-Mountain Foods, the company's warehousing and distribution center. The company currently is ranked number 44 among the nation's largest grocery chains and number 279 among the nation's top 500 privately held companies according to Forbes Magazine. For more information, please call 276.628.8173 or visit www.foodcity.com.

About Vocollect

Vocollect's Talkman products are wireless, wearable, voice powered computers that help warehouse workers increase material movement accuracy, productivity and speed through hands-free, eyes-free operation. The Talkman allows users to talk to the terminal, and in turn to the host warehouse management system, as freely and easily as they talk to each other.

Vocollect is a privately held company that has been engineering and manufacturing voice-directed systems since the company was founded in 1987. Today, it is the global leader in wearable computers employing speech synthesis and speech recognition technology for warehousing and industrial applications, with thousands of terminals installed throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Vocollect provides Talkman systems both directly and through a global network of reseller partners for customers in inventory-driven industries, food and retail product distribution, manufacturing and quality control.

Vocollect is headquartered in Pittsburgh, and was recently named one of the Pittsburgh Technology Council's 50 Fastest Growing Technology Companies for the third consecutive year. For more information, please call 412.829.8145 or visit www.vocollect.com.