Voice Technology Boosts Productivity at American Woodmark

Not only can current employees perform better with voice, but new employees catch up much faster because the voice training process is personalized to their voice and use intuitive voice conversation.

American Woodmark Corporation is a kitchen and bathroom cabinet manufacturer based in Winchester, Virginia. The corporation has multiple manufacturing plants and service centers throughout the United States.

During the pandemic, the home-building market and consumer demand for home renovation supplies increased dramatically, making fast and correct order fulfillment even more important for the cabinet maker and distributor. To meet high demand without compromising safety or accuracy, American Woodmark warehouse workers must use a picking solution that allows them to move delicate cabinet doors with both hands and keep their eyes up, allowing them to look around their large picking carts rather than down at their instructions.

"Traditional warehouse systems do not provide the hands-free, eyes-free capabilities that a voice system does, and as a result, your accuracy, efficiency, and visibility suffer," explains Greg Weigel, senior director of IT at AmericanWoodmark.

Since American Woodmark had been using Mountain Leverage voice technology for pick-to-order in numerous distribution locations for over 20 years, they turned to the same business for assistance. Mountain Leverage advertises itself as offering a unique, people-first approach to technology deployment, which results in improved experiences for American Woodmark order selections.

Mountain Leverage's technical team created American Woodmark's voice solution to streamline work, eliminate product contacts, increase picking speed, improve order correctness, and ensure worker safety.

Most importantly, Mountain Leverage claims that its voice solution prioritizes the employee experience, resulting in increased performance and better labor retention rates even in a tight labor market. "Running around a warehouse or manufacturing plant is difficult for the worker, but our solution improves worker satisfaction," says Mountain Leverage CEO Alex Reneman. "How our technologies help is that you can imagine someone walking alongside you in the workplace, telling you where to go, similar to a GPS in your car. Plus, having native technology (such as speech) in the workplace is beneficial and, when it comes to retention, provides an advantage."

The results were favorable. American Woodmark claims that their firm continues to develop as a result of agile, efficient technological processes and people-first solutions that enable scalability, data visibility, and market responsiveness.

"The voice technology helps my team work safely and efficiently, as well as gives me a real-time snapshot of inventory so I can manage our business," says Nathan Pritts, materials operations manager at American Woodmark. "It also allows us to train a new hire very quickly."

Not only do current employees perform better with voice, but new American Woodmark employees catch up significantly faster since the voice training process is personalized to their voice and uses intuitive voice conversation.

Previously, workers had to spend weeks learning a sophisticated, coded shipping label to understand which parts were chosen for which cabinets, and they frequently made mistakes while feeding production lines. The speech system allows someone without product knowledge to select by location and amount; no product training is necessary. Supervisors can also use Mountain Leverage's mobile software, Voice Supervisor, on a tablet to monitor each worker's performance, speed, and location as the operator speaks through the system.

Anchored on their shared values of elevating experiences for employees, customers, and business leaders alike, American Woodmark and Mountain Leverage's collaboration enabled voice-picking solutions that have improved business performance in the face of shifting market pressures, as well as allowing American Woodmark to beat the odds of global labor shortages by providing an optimal work environment with intuitive, efficient, and safe technology for workers.