Acute-care facility New York Hospital Queens, located in the Flushing section of New York City, is piloting radio frequency identification technology to help it manage its inventory of medical devices and consumables, including stents, catheters and filters used within its interventional radiology unit.

Performance metrics for warehouses and distribution centers have steadily improved since 2003, when the Warehousing Education and Research Council first conducted its annual "DC Measures" study, says Joe Tillman, senior researcher at Supply Chain Visions and co-author of the study. Moreover, the gap has significantly narrowed between best-in-class companies and those lower on the performance scale, he says.

Because the DC is an expensive - but indispensable item - the CEO needs to be on top of operations that fulfill directly to customers' homes, says Matt Kulp, director, distribution and fulfillment, St. Onge Company, an engineering services company.

The evolution of voice technology now includes an integration of graphical data visually displayed, says John Reichert, TECSYS marketing director. The combination is quicker and more beneficial than one might think.

Small-item fulfillment continues to grow, especially with e-commerce orders, but a lot of traditional sortation technology was never designed to handle smaller and lighter pieces, says John Park, product manager, Accu-Sort Systems.

Costly coding requirements have limited adoption of voice technology, but that is changing, says Steve Gerrard, vice president, marketing and strategy, Voxware. The technology is truly adaptive now, which is a key buying criterion.