As a result, his team and contractors conducted three site surveys to see if they had Wi-Fi access points installed properly and in the correct sites to handle inventory data transmissions reliably. One of the surveys was conducted when the building was nearly built and the physical layout was known. The second took place after some of the goods had arrived. And the third came after the warehouse was full, Witty said.

Still, Witty said, 'I learned you can never start planning too early. There are a lot of gotchas on a building of this size and scale. You have to make sure you talk through every need.' He said he learned that on future projects he should get the fiber and Ethernet cable contract work started earlier, but he praised the cable contractor, Lexington, Ky.-based Amteck of Kentucky Inc., for its efforts to get the job done quickly.

Site surveys are absolutely critical to get deployments right and for complete WiFi coverage," said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates in Northboro, Mass. "Warehouses can be particularly bad with metal all over. Metal and wireless don't get along real well."

Gold said that designing the wireless system was crucial as well, since 50 workers in one location could probably not be supported by a single access point. And workers relying on voice commands via wireless, as in the case of the new warehouse, need reliable connections, he said.

The innovations in the warehouse that Wi-Fi supports include a voice-based inventory picking system, which is based on software from Lucas Systems Inc. in Sewickley, Pa. The system allows workers who pick bottles for an order from warehouse racks to receive audible commands via a headset over Wi-Fi from "Jennifer," an automated voice attendant that uses optical character recognition technology to interpret written orders. The system helps double-check that the attendant made the correct choice, and a team of workers at a separate location provide another check, Witty said.