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Success Story
Zebra's own warehouse puts Workcloud Sync to the test, increasing efficiency and throughput
At Zebra Technologies’ distribution centre in Heerenveen, the Netherlands, around 130 people receive, pick, pack, and ship Zebra products to customers across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Zebra Success Story: Zebra Technologies
Overview: Manufacturing Challenge
Zebra wanted to equip warehouse frontline workers with a direct communication tool to eliminate time-consuming walks to the coordination centre, enabling faster issue resolution and smoother order throughput.
Benefits / Outcomes
- 90% less time spent chasing answers on foot
- 5x faster task reassignment for order pickers
- 12x faster pallet throughput to the packing floor
- €24,000 savings estimated per year
- Improved picking quality through instant colleague access
- Enhanced safety with less movement in and out of aisles
Customer
Zebra Technologies
The Netherlands
Industry
Manufacturing
Solutions
About Zebra Technologies
The truest test of any product is whether the people who made it would use it themselves—not in a demo suite, but in the middle of a real shift, with real deadlines, and real problems to solve.
At Zebra Technologies’ distribution centre in Heerenveen, the Netherlands, around 130 people receive, pick, pack, and ship Zebra products to customers across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The centre processes roughly 1,000 to 1,200 order lines a day with a two-day shipping window. It's a working warehouse, not a testing facility. But when the team identified a persistent communication gap on the floor, it became both.
The Challenge
The centre's coordination hub is a glass-walled office the team calls the “fishbowl”. Order pickers work across a large floor, operating trucks up to nine metres high. Whenever issues arose, they would need to come down, drive to the fishbowl, ask the question in person, and drive back. A single query could cost up to fifteen minutes, and in a warehouse where accuracy is non-negotiable, the questions couldn't wait. “This undercut morale at the warehouse, with pickers having to abandon tasks mid-pick to chase answers,” explains Winfried Van Wijnen, Warehouse Supervisor for the Packing Department at Zebra.
The issue went beyond lost time. Team leads had no way to contact frontline workers directly for problem-solving or reprioritising. Communicating a change to an entire department meant pulling people off their trucks for an ad hoc meeting. A push-to-talk feature was available on Zebra devices, but adoption was limited. “Push-to-talk is like a walkie-talkie,” explains Van Wijnen. “It didn’t have a ringtone. You would just hear somebody go, ‘Hello, hello,’ and if people didn’t have their devices with them, they wouldn’t respond.”
Issues get resolved faster, which means more pick lines during a day. By handling questions through a quick call instead of a five- to ten-minute walk to the fishbowl each time, we're saving close to three hours per day for two shifts combined.
The Solution
Van Wijnen read about Workcloud Sync, Zebra’s AI-powered collaboration software, in an email update. “Unlike push-to-talk, it works like a smartphone app with chat, calling, and notifications. I thought it would be an excellent way to transform how we communicate on the warehouse floor,” he recalls. The team also saw this as an opportunity to give meaningful feedback on the solution. “Workcloud Sync was originally built with a retail environment in mind, so deploying it in a working warehouse opened up a new testing ground,” Van Wijnen continues. “It would be a safe space for us to surface potential issues.”
The implementation was smooth. Zebra's Workcloud Sync project team provided a full project plan, dedicated engineers, and training sessions. Rather than piloting with a small group, the team opted for a full rollout across a wide range of Zebra mobile computers through picking, packing, and fishbowl coordinator’s teams, as well as on mobile computers elsewhere in the warehouse. Leadership also started using Sync on permitted personal iOS, watchOS, and Android™ devices. “We didn’t need hours of training; Workcloud Sync was very intuitive,” recalls Jan Den Dekker, Senior Operations Manager at Zebra. “Within one week, the whole team was using it.”
The Heerenveen staff flagged a couple of bugs and feed observations back to the product team. Announcement notifications, for example, weren't pushing through to the devices; a calling bug silenced incoming rings when a user's status was set to “away.” Both were fixed. “The Workcloud Sync project team really took ownership,” notes Den Dekker. “They took every problem seriously and came back with real solutions.”
The feedback also included feature requests. And when the warehouse staff began testing a new Zebra Android desktop computer, their first question was whether Workcloud Sync could run on it, showing users’ interest for it beyond handheld devices.
The Zebra Difference: Outcome and Benefits
The most visible improvement was picking efficiency. “Issues get resolved faster, which means more pick lines during a day,” explains Van Wijnen. “By handling questions through a quick call instead of a five- to ten-minute walk to the fishbowl each time, we're saving close to three hours per day for two shifts combined. That equates to savings of about €24,000 per year.”
Reassignment became faster, too: when an order picker ran out of work, they used to drive to a coordinator and wait about five minutes to be redirected. Now, it takes under a minute. Most team meetings have also been eliminated, saving time further. “Small updates can now go out as a message, reaching everyone instantly, even those on a break,” Den Dekker shares.
The efficiency gains feed into a key metric: on-time shipping. “That's a promise we make to our customers, and Workcloud Sync helps us keep it,” Van Wijnen explains.
Now that reaching out to a colleague only takes seconds, pickers are more likely to ask for help when they're unsure about an item. “Before, some people might just make decisions on their own, and nobody would know until a complaint came in,” Den Dekker notes. “Now, you have instant confirmation or advice. And that improves quality overall.”
The warehouse staff has also eliminated communication gaps further along the chain. On the warehouse mezzanine, pickers load small parts into crates on pallets that need to be brought down to the packing floor. Previously, there was no direct way to signal that a pallet was ready. “Pallets were sometimes standing there for three hours,” shares Van Wijnen. “Now, with a quick message through Workcloud Sync, the pallets hit the packing floor within 15 to 20 minutes.” The difference matters downstream: instead of several pallets arriving at once and clogging the packing floor, work flows through at a steady pace.
Safety has improved, too. “With fewer pickers climbing down from height and driving back and forth to the fishbowl, there is simply less movement in and out of the aisles," Van Wijnen shares.
Among the staff, the verdict is clear. The software has quickly become an indispensable part of their daily operations. “Our employees can’t imagine working without Workcloud Sync anymore,” Van Wijnen shares.
With 17 nationalities from four continents working at the centre, not everyone speaks Dutch or English. So the AI-powered translation feature has been particularly appreciated, with Workcloud Sync translating messages into each user's chosen language in real time.
For Zebra, the Heerenveen deployment did more than solve a communication problem in one warehouse. It gave a team of 130 workers a direct voice in shaping a key product. “This was an implementation for the frontliners, by the frontliners,” Den Dekker reflects. “This is how we improve our workflows and products every day.”
