Case Study: Fox Racing Sees Productivity Soar With Voice Technology

The Client. Fox Racing was founded in 1974 as a clothing maker for motocross, an intense and demanding combination of stunt- and dirt-bike riding. The company is among the world’s most recognizable brands, thanks to the fox head logo sported by motocross participants and fans in real life and on TV sitcoms. Now, in its third decade, Fox Racing has branched out as an apparel provider for surfers, wakeboarders and mountain bikers, too; it’s also big in major department stores. Fox Racing is headquartered in Morgan Hill, Calif., with offices in Irvine, Calif.; Calgary, Alberta, Canada; and Newcastle, U.K.

The Challenge. Fox Racing had reached the point where its technology could not accommodate more growth  the company had added so many new product lines that it was maintaining more than 35,000 product codes. That was a struggle, though, given that Fox had been using paper and labels in its order-picking operation, and RF scanning for putaway and replenishment workflows. The former method hurt productivity and accuracy, and the latter required too many steps, which meant that reliability suffered. For instance, grabbing a size 15 boot with an RF gun in hand was difficult. Employees needed a hands-free option.

The Solution. Fox turned to its technology partner, Vitech Business Group, for help. Vitech asked Fox to identify its priorities. Those were: to keep pace with a highly fluctuating order volume; to improve the ability to plan staffing levels according to order volumes; to reduce the cost of RF equipment replacements; and to cut down on long worker training times and problems incurred by human error. As a result of those needs, Vitech recommended Fox deploy a voice platform that would dictate instructions to workers, and let staff talk back. In such a scenario, warehouse workers wear headsets that give them directions; at the same time, people can talk to the voice recognition system, letting it know when they have finished a task, for example. With this in mind, Fox chose to use Vocollect Voice.

The Result. Fox uses Vocollect Voice for its picking, replenishment, cycle-counting, slotting, receiving (Europe), and soon, packing, operations. In the time since deploying Vocollect Voice, Fox has seen notable changes.

I am quite satisfied with the way we have been able to rapidly identify and integrate new ways of using voice across multiple workflows,” said Robby Dhesi, vice president of operations at Fox Racing. “We would be happy with the results we have attained just from using voice with picking, but the value-add we have found in applying voice for many other workflows and the ability to interleave tasks have make our overall performance skyrocket and keep pace with the growing demands of a successful business.”