Coca-Cola HBC Aims for 100% Accuracy Using Vision Picking

Initial Situation

Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (HBC) is one of the

largest bottlers for The Coca-Cola Company in terms of

volume, with sales of more than two billion units every

year. The warehouse procedures mainly consist of mixed

pallet picking, so crates, shrink-wrapped bottle packs, and

cans that are being packed onto pallets for the delivery

trucks. In their daily work, the operators in Coca-Cola

HBC’s warehouses used paper lists or tablets mounted

on pallet jacks and radio frequency (RF) scanners.

Set out to find new, more efficient warehousing

solutions Coca-Cola started investigating industrial

augmented reality (AR) technology starting with a pilot

at a Coca-Cola HBC distribution centre in Thessaloniki,

Greece. There, a team of 16 pickers that collects multi-

product orders was equipped with smart glasses and

TeamViewer Frontline’s vision picking solution xPick.

This starting point was deemed a success with

convincing results that led to an immediate ramp

up of Coca-Cola HBC’s AR journey. A large-scale

implementation in another six warehouses took place

in 2019, the same year the first pilot started, to a

total of 29 warehouses in 2022 with at least another 5

planned go-lives in 2023, making vision picking Coca-

Cola HBC’s new standard warehousing technology.

For us at Coca-Cola HBC vision picking

is not an innovation project, but an

enterprise solution at scale.

„

Angel Boyanov, Product Manager - Warehouse

Management & Cold Drinks Operations

Coca-Cola HBC Aims

for 100% Accuracy

Using Vision Picking

Solution xPick

Case Study

29 locations across

Europe and North Africa

Fast-Moving Consumer

Goods (FMCG) Industry

In productive use since

2019

Teamviewer Frontline Solution

To optimize and standardize their processes, Coca-Cola

HBC chose to implement the industry-proven TeamViewer

Frontline solution xPick running on robust RealWear smart

glasses. 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

above the pallet with the smart glasses’ camera. The picked

amount is conﬁrmed via voice command. This leaves the

picker’s hands free for the actual task: putting the drinks onto

the pallets. The orders are displayed in a step-by-step manner,

while the order information is pulled directly from Coca-Cola’s

SAP warehouse management system.

The backend integration enables automatic status updates

of all individual orders. Full integration into the backend

system was achieved through a close collaboration between

TeamViewer and Coca-Cola HBC’s system integrator.

Throughout the initial implementation phase, an active

participation of the people who actually do the job was seen

as crucial to the project’s success. Overall, an agile approach

was chosen to improve the solution on the go – constantly

accompanied by TeamViewer’s solution delivery and customer

success teams for after-go-live support. This led to an easy-

to-scale solution template that facilitated the following mass

rollouts, empowering more than 1,000 pickers in multiple shifts

across 17 countries already today.

The way of warehousing will

never be the same again.

„

Suzana Rari, Supply Chain Manager,

Coca-Cola HBC Greece & Cyprus

We needed to improve our picking

accuracy. With the high volumes we

ship, even a 0.1% error rate can lead

to 1,000 wrong deliveries, resulting

in 1,000 customer complaints.

„

Suzana Rari, Supply Chain Manager,

Coca-Cola HBC Greece & Cyprus

Challenge

To stay ahead of the curve and maintain high levels of

customer satisfaction, Coca-Cola HBC is constantly

exploring new technologies that help optimize their

processes. One of the key factors that the bottler is

pursuing is delivery of the highest quality. For their

warehouse operations this means a focus on the

accuracy of customer orders being delivered.

The inconsistent, outdated methodologies, pick by paper

or handheld RF guns combined with tablets mounted

onto pallet jacks, initially built to support the pickers were

identified as inefficient and as one possible error source.

Wrong deliveries are not just a critical element when it

comes to customer satisfaction, but also represent a major

cost factor. Rejected orders have to be brought back to the

warehouse and a new order has to be shipped, resulting in

a spike in logistics handling costs, all due to wrong picking.

To reach highest accuracy, Coca-Cola HBC identified the

opportunity to switch to smart glasses, improving the

accuracy of mixed pallet picking in their warehouses.

On top of increasing the output quality of warehouse

operations, Coca-Cola HBC aimed at higher productivity

as labor shortage leads to an increased demand.

Results

After only two months of implementing the vision picking

solution, Coca-Cola HBC’s picking accuracy had already

reached 99.99%, achieving the set goal of reducing errors,

and at the same time improving customer satisfaction rates

and reducing cost of returns. While picking accuracy was

one of the main KPI Coca-Cola HBC was aiming to improve,

achieving a productivity increase of 10% at the same time

was crucial, especially regarding the continuing labor

shortages within the European markets.

Compared to the previous solutions (RF guns and handheld

terminals), the implementation of vision picking also

resulted in lower hardware costs, improving their CAPEX, and

did not require oftentimes costly changes to the warehouse

infrastructure.

The best part? Their pickers are satisﬁed with the new

solution. Before the deployment, they tested a pick-by-voice

solution and other technologies and clearly voted for a vision

picking solution. The highly intuitive character of Frontline’s

xPick solution, combining visual cues, voice interaction, and

easy scanning, as well as the instant increase in productivity

has led to high employee engagement and adoption

rates. This did not only accelerate the switch to the new

method for the existing workforce, but also speeds up the

onboarding of new staff, enabling Coca-Cola HBC to react

more ﬂexibly to seasonal demand ﬂuctuation.

Thanks to TeamViewer’s innovative

technology and excellent collaboration,

we were able to improve our productivity

while at the same time increasing our

picking quality and thus our customer

satisfaction. It could not be better.

„

Suzana Rari, Supply Chain Manager,

Coca-Cola HBC Greece & Cyprus

99%

Accuracy

6-8% Increased

Picking Performance

Easy

Scalability

Austria

Bosnia & Herzegovina

Bulgaria

Croatia

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Greece

Hungary

Italy

Latvia

Lithuania

Northern Ireland

North Macedonia

Poland

Romania

Serbia

Slovakia

Ukraine

Kosovo Nigeria

Productive roll-out

Implementation planned for 2023

Contact

www.teamviewer.com/frontline

TeamViewer Germany GmbH

Bahnhofsplatz 2

73033 Göppingen

Germany

+49 (0) 7161 60692 50

TeamViewer US Inc.

5741 Rio Vista Dr

Clearwater, FL 33760

USA

1 800 638 0253 (Toll-Free)

TVF-CS-EN-US-EMEA-012023-2

About TeamViewer

As a leading global technology company, TeamViewer offers

a secure remote connectivity platform to access, control,

manage, monitor, and support any device — across platforms

— from anywhere. With more than 600,000 customers,

TeamViewer is free for private, non-commercial use and has

been installed on more than 2.5 billion devices. TeamViewer

continuously innovates in the ﬁelds of Remote Connectivity,

Augmented Reality, Internet of Things, and Digital Customer

Engagement, enabling companies from all industries to

digitally transform their business-critical processes through

seamless connectivity.

Founded in 2005, and headquartered in Göppingen, Germany,

TeamViewer is a publicly held company with approximately

1,400 global employees. TeamViewer AG (TMV) is listed at

Frankfurt Stock Exchange and belongs to the MDAX.

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