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 #20: Failing to invest in staff development

The best systems and technology in the world are of no use if you do not develop your staff to get the best out of them.  I do not want to dive in to human resource management and labour relations techniques here; but I do think that if you have got the culture right in your organisation, then one of the best things you can do is invest in training and developing your staff in ways that are relevant to your business.

Many businesses (particularly small – medium sized businesses) make the mistake of thinking that people will just pick up what they need to know along the way.  This is true to a certain extent, but would you neglect other areas of your business the same way?  Would you not bother to do any marketing and just hope that your customers figured out what you did and offered all by themselves?

So what training or development activities should you do for your warehouse staff?  Where do you start if you have literally nothing?  The place to start is with the activities that most directly impact on your customer service.  This is usually the picking, packing and despatch processes.  I suggest that you write a step by step work instruction based on the what your most experienced and best operators do.  This includes the physical process and any system interactions that they need in the performance of their work.  The written instruction will be a guide to the operator on what to do, and for the instructor on what to teach.  Starting with picking work your way through all your core activities until you have a complete set of training documentation.

You can also make this fun by making a video instruction.  Sitting all new hires through half an hour or so of video showing them the basics is a great way for many people to learn.  This should not be a substitute for detailed instruction and coaching by a supervisor, but it can help lighten the load somewhat, particularly if you use casual labour to manage peak workloads.

There are three stages required to cement any learning and all should be documented in a training register to record where people are at in their training program.  The three steps are:

1. I have been shown what to do and received the work instruction to refer to.
2. I have done the task for the prescribed period and feel like I know what to do.
3. I have been tested or assessed to be competent by an experienced person

If you adopt this approach you put the responsibility on both the operator and the trainer to confirm their competence in performing a task.  Your staff will become more productive due to reduced errors and a common set of procedures for all warehouse activities.  You should see your KPIs improve as you roll out your training program.  

Not only do you need a good training program in place for your warehouse operators but your supervisors and managers must also be developed to improve their management skill and understanding of warehousing and performance improvement so that they can apply these skills to improve the processes and operations within the warehouse.

Many supervisors and managers in businesses are drawn from talented and motivated storespeople but have had no formal training or broader exposure to the range of ideas and technologies available to improve the performance of their warehouse.

Recognising this need, Logistics Help are developing the Warehouse Performance Initiative (WPI) to help develop the skills of all those responsible for managing warehouses.  The sign up for those who are interested in joining is available now

The aim of the WPI is to create a resource to develop superior performance in warehousing regardless of business size, resources or location.  Starting with an online (and eventually offline) space providing ideas and resources drawn from wide experience of what works in improving warehouse performance.  Members of the WPI will be able to join in a forum to discuss ideas and get answers to questions from other members and expert moderators.

WPI members will also get all of the Logistics Help templates and self-help resources developed over many years of consulting experience, for half the normal list price.  Membership is free and .
The WPI will also encourage offline Warehouse Performance Groups where members can organize meet ups and regular meetings to help each other improve their skills and share experiences about what they are finding out how to improve their warehouse performance.

Ultimately we hope to develop some core modules for a training program for warehouse supervisors and managers which can be delivered both in workshop seminar format and online.   The aim being to dramatically improve the quality of warehouse performance for small-medium businesses around the world.

The sign up page is here.

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.