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.

You can also subscribe to this blog by email and get my future posts delivered to direct your inbox.

21 mistakes adding cost and killing productivity in your warehouse - #12

12.    Cluttered and badly organised operations benches

Quite frankly many operations benches that I see are a mess, cluttered and covered in stuck orders, returns, old paperwork, out of date work instructions and broken staplers and tapeguns.  There is no point having a highly efficient warehouse if you lose your hard won productivity gains with slow administration in receiving and order confirmation/packing freight. 

Here are my tips for best practice in operations workbench organisation

• The first aim of an operations bench should be to have nothing on it apart from work in progress.  Computers, printers, labels, pens, cartons, pending paperwork should be stored off the surface of the bench itself.  Either above or below.  This way nothing will get lost or mislaid.  Everything is easily to hand and never in the way.
• Custom make your workbench to suit your process.  Make sure everything is in arms reach from the operator.  This can be as simple as installing some shelves and Dexion bins to give everything a place.  If you work space is limited you can install monitor and keyboard stands to get the computers off the work top.  Printers can be installed under the bench or on a separate stand.
• Lay a padded anti-fatigue mat in front of the bench.
• The areas around the bench must be kept clear also with a standardised workflow of products and paperwork in and out.
• Sometimes the best bench is mobile.  Breaking down a mixed pallet of small items can be done on the dock with a multi-level trolley/bench that allows you to sort, check off, book in a delivery and then roll the trolley to the rack for put-away.
• Similarly on the outbound process, orders picked to a carton on a picking trolley can be checked, labelled and closed on the trolley and then rolled to the dock for staging ready for pick-up.
• Take advantage of wireless mobile terminals, and printers or even a laptop to allow transactions to be completed on the spot without the need for constant travel to/from a bench.  Installing a wireless network in your warehouse (even a cheap one) will free you up to perform warehouse transactions at the point of activity.  This is a key driver of efficiency and accuracy and is a good interim step if you have not yet invested in a WMS.

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.

You can also subscribe to this blog by email and get my future posts delivered to direct your inbox.

21 mistakes adding cost and killing productivity in your warehouse - #2

2. Inadequate paperwork

Nothing stops a process dead in the water faster than not having the correct paperwork or not having enough information on the paperwork to process the inbound or outbound order.  Any interruption to the normal process flow creates exception processing which is typically two or three times the time and cost of a standardised and optimised process flow.  These interruptions can become so normalised that your staff don’t even notice them any more.  

The classic symptom of this is when you walk into your warehouse and see two or more of your staff standing still with a piece of paper in their hands staring at your stock trying to figure out what to do next.  I once walked into the warehouse of a large online business and saw twenty or more receiving staff standing around looking bewildered!  Needless to say, product was not getting booked in and put-away, which means that stock could not be picked and customers were also being disappointed.

This has potentially worse impacts on the outbound side where inadequate information during order processing can have a direct impact on the customer.  Any processes relying of experience and storeperson memory put you at risk of error and slow down your processes.

The antidote is to conduct a process review of all of your warehouse processes and flow chart all the current business flows.  There are lots of great software tools available to do this but some A3 paper, pencil and an eraser will also do the job just fine.  These flowcharts must include physical and information flows.  

When you do this the exceptions will come to light.  Re-engineering the process flows is about removing exceptions by changing the processes and systems to consolidate exceptions into the main process flow.  Once your exceptions are limited to only 1% or 2% of your transactions that you cannot get around then you will have a more efficient process flow.

Re-engineering a process can involve changing physical flows to reduce the waste of motion.  Introducing new materials handling equipment.  Modifying your business system to change existing reports or create new ones so that the warehouse operators have all the information they need to process a transaction.

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.

You can also subscribe to this blog by email and get my future posts delivered to direct your inbox.

How do I improve the productivity in my warehouse?

This is a lightning overview of how to get some rapid productivity gains in your warehouse.

First off you should really assess the match between business strategy and the warehouse operations. No business is static, and now more than ever fundamental changes in markets and customer behaviour can creep up on a business and require a revised approach to your stock management and order fulfillment strategies.  If your customers are now ordering more frequently in smaller order sizes or your direct to customer online business has taken off then your costs per sales dollar may have sky-rocketed and your warehouse may need a rethink.