21 Mistakes adding cost and killing productivity in your warehouse #21: Failing to maintain and develop your operations as your business grows and changes

The seventh habit in Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is Sharpen the Saw.  This is the recognition that even the best “saws” become blunt over time.  If the saw wasn’t that sharp to begin with, then a few years down the track the work of cutting through becomes really hard!  Does your warehouse feel like that?  Just plain hard work to get through every day?

The mistake of not changing your warehouse operations as your business evolves can cost you dearly.  Even traditional businesses are constantly changing now and the pace of change seems to keep increasing.  New, products, new customers, new services, maybe even completely new business models can get dumped onto the warehouse and the common response is a hasty rehash of existing systems and processes to “get by for now”.  This pattern accumulates inefficiencies over time and can end up with a very inefficient warehouse, staffed by a lot of frustrated people, with the whole operation in need of a major overhaul.

The antidote to “getting by for now” is a program of continuous improvement.  I see two distinct areas to focus on to drive an effective continuous improvement program to keep your warehouse operations up to date and running smoothly.

1. A periodic audit and redesign based on the application of Lean principles will introduce a step change in technology or infrastructure to allow your business to operate at a higher level of efficiency and output.
2. A Lean principle based continuous improvement program will help you to optimise your current processes and work methods.

These ideas are really two sides of the Lean coin: 

• firstly the strategic business side which must be driven by the management team based on how the business is supplying value to customers and 
• secondly the operational continuous improvement that hones the day to day execution of the strategy and it supporting infrastructure.

The need for a change in strategy or infrastructure is often driven by a crisis or repetitive failures by the business to deliver the value required by its customers at a sustainable cost.  Service failures, customer complaints, out of stocks, overstocks, high operational costs, overflow storage are all examples of the sort of pain that will prompt a change in strategy or highlight the need for new infrastructure in a business.

If the resources to answer these challenges are not available within the business then help from professional business advisors will be required to help formulate an appropriate response to the business challenges.  This is exactly where Logistics Help can advise a business that is facing issues such as:

• the relocation of a warehouse or
• the need to keep the current warehouse viable for a few more years,
• warehouse management systems implementations
• materials handling systems
• freight management issues
• or any other warehouse related issue.

A review of the business operations followed by a guided implementation program aimed at delivering business results and a solid return on investment is what we specialise in at Logistics Help.

Whilst major change programs are essential to long term business health, they are not by themselves sufficient.  The ongoing operation of the facilities and systems are critical to success.  This is where any systematic application of Lean principles must flow throughout the company to the operators that deliver the daily work.  Training and coaching your operational staff including managers, supervisors and warehouse operators in the attitudes and tool kit of Lean, will ensure that you get the best out of your investments in the technology and infrastructure of your business.

This is a bottom up approach that engages the hearts and minds of everyone in your business to ensure its success.  Our aim at Logistics Help is to provide resources and training for your staff in applying Lean principles and up to date knowledge and tools for warehousing and distribution so that your warehouse is vibrant and productive.

To this end we have launched the Warehouse Performance Initiative to foster a community of warehouse professionals to raise the standard of knowledge, expertise and effectiveness of people working in warehouses around the world.  You can get involved straight away by signing up here and receive the compete eBook of these posts of the 21 mistakes as a thank-you.  We will also keep you informed of new features and resources as we build them.

This is post is taken from an ebook that is now available as a bonus to members of the Warehouse Performance Initiative (WPI*).

The WPI is a place for learning how to improve your knowledge of warehouse operations improvement, sharing skills and ideas and helping other warehouse professionals.  Joining the WPI will give you access to a growing range of free and premium content which will have a direct impact on improving your warehouse performance when you apply it to your business.

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