Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company productively implements vision picking with smart glasses

Atlanta, GA - Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (HBC) is a leading bottler for The Coca-Cola Company in terms of volume, selling more than two billion unit cases every year. At Coca-Cola HBC’s distribution centre based in Thessaloniki, Greece, the talented team of 12 pickers collect together multi product orders. Crates, shrink foiled bottle packs, and cans are packed onto pallets for the delivery trucks.

To optimize processes, Coca-Cola HBC chose to implement the industry-proven Ubimax solution xPick. The pickers are shown the picking items, picking locations and quantities right in their field of view. To confirm they picked from the right location, they scan a QR-Code placed above the pallet with the smart glasses’ camera. This leaves the pickers’ hands free for the actual task. The orders are displayed in a step-by-step manner as Coca-Cola HBCs SAP production system and warehouse management system was connected to the solution, to deliver the order data. This way, the system is automatically and simultaneously updated about the status of all individual orders.

In addition, even if it is too early to consolidate achieved benefits after the 1st month of vision picking implementation, it is recorded a picking accuracy increase of now 99,99% and a picking performance increase in the range of 6% to 8%. Using the Ubimax solution, Coca-Cola HBC is further improving its customer satisfaction and has at the same time been able to save a higher double-digit percentage in CAPEX compared to the renewal of the former scanner technology. Also, the pickers are satisfied with the new solution. Before the deployment, they tested a pick-by-voice solution and other technologies and voted for a vision picking solution. Economically a critical asset was the easy scalability of the solution. Coca-Cola HBC is planning to deploy the vision picking technology at two further sites instantly with another five sites planned for this year.

Suzana Rari, Supply Chain Manager, Coca-Cola HBC Greece & Cyprus is very satisfied: “Thanks to Ubimax’s innovative technology and excellent collaboration, we were able to improve our productivity while at the same time increase our picking quality and thus our customer satisfaction. It could not be better.”