Household goods retailer Wilkinson is equipping distribution centre staff with voice recognition technology to speed up delivery of goods in the run-up to Christmas.

Some 630 workers will use the devices at Wilkinson’s two main distribution centres to process some of the 25,000 items stored across 2.3 million square feet of warehouse space and deliver the items to one of 283 shops.

Wilkinson has invested £1.4m in Psion Teklogix mobile devices equipped with voice recognition software Vocollect.

The technology will replace Wilkinson's existing paper-based system and is expected to deliver a return on investment within 10 months based on productivity increases alone. Improved stock control and order selection accuracy could shorten the time even further, the company said.