Big Warehouse Improvements through Small Changes

or over the past 20 years improve their warehouse performance operations in my current role as solutions consultant for high jump I'm in a unique position to frequently visit companies and make recommendations on how they can improve their warehouse performance on my visits the companies I generally visit are interested in the benefits provided by a warehouse management system or WMS however I frequently observe fundamental process improvements they could make that will help them improve performance with simple non-technical changes after these visits I provide the customer with ideas on these low-hanging fruit opportunities that they can make to improve their operations the session is an overview summary of some of the improvement opportunities I typically see and I also sometimes refer to this as finding quarters in the couch the categories we will cover today include applying 5s principles to the warehouse measuring performance optimizing the use of space products starting to improve labor productivity planning around your order profiles consider implementing a warehouse within a warehouse matching the pic process to the order profile implementing a vendor compliance program to improve receiving processes optimizing inventory and last but not least getting involved as we discuss improvement ideas keep these key points in mind labor costs will typically consume at least 60% of your ha pic labor can consume up to 70% of wor house labor in a typical supply chain the warehouse is the last place to touch the product and potentially impact customer service levels and customer perceptions and you're paying for space even if you don't use it so you may may as well use it wisely and with the growing expectation of short delivery lead times your warehouse needs to be able to respond efficiently now this is not a political statement but rather an on statistical observation from my experience people with a military background tend to make better warehouse managers now I'm not certain if it's the type of people that are attracted to military service or if millions people how to be organized but people with a military background tend to be more prone to organization and implementing our first topic 5s principles 5s has been applied extensively in manufacturing the same ideas will improve performance in the warehouse the components of 5s or sort set an order shine standardize and sustain we'll discuss five out 5s warehouse examples next there is efficiency and order in a war house there should be a place for everything and everything should be in its place for example it is easy to have tools ready readily available for your team to maintain cleanliness and here is an example of tool organization and availability a company I visited recently they set up mobile shipping crates building tool kits I've seen this set up for many years and traditional manufacturing work cell layouts and as you can see here the same principle applies in the warehouse I often say the best tools you can have in the warehouse or a paintbrush and a broom when a tour warehouse I first visit the manager's office this can be an indicator of how efficient the operations will be if things are organized and clean there's a good chance for efficient operations if however papers are piled high there is a partially eaten sandwich on the desk there are many post-it notes on the computer screen and the buddy chair is cluttered with magazines or inventory chances are the facility may not be too organized as I mentioned earlier there is efficiency in order the warehouse should have clearly marked areas for traffic processing and storage this will help ensure a product is stored properly product is kept secure and the work environment is kept safe think about a parking lot on a sunny summer day with clearly marked spots you may be able to get 100 cars into the parking lot however when it snows capacity may be cut in half additionally keeping the area's clean will help drive efficiency from a safety perspective I hosted a lean tour of a large distribution center in Atlanta along with seeing many lean process ideas I noticed they had a strong focus on employee safety for instance one thing everyone did and we received training on this before the tour was the practice of stop look and point before you crossed an active equipment travel aisle safety was ingrained in their culture on a trip to England I observed some of the warehouse practices I learned an employee in the warehouse all employees in the warehouse are required to wear safety vests to make them more visible to equipment drivers while this is not not a regular while this is a regulation in England excuse me I expect it if something you can easily do in your operations to help ensure employee safety and the warehouse layout can have an impact on overall efficiency organization and cleanliness in general aisles should run in straight lines without meandering or dead ends if you have a chance to change the facility layout you might consider the research done by dr. Kevin GU from University of Louisville he estimates you can reduce travel times by up to 20% by implementing a Flying V or fishbone I'll lay out GU proposes breaking out of the traditional right angle aisle paradigm and introducing something closer to 45-degree aisles when planning or house think of it bins as a matrix that should be easily memorized and navigated for example in the United States the Eisenhower interest interstate system was designed to allow a user to generally identify where they are and where they are headed at any given point in the system things like odd number routes run north or south and even-numbered routes from east to west warehouse bins can be marked with letters numbers colors graphic signs or combination in a typical warehouse you start with a common reference point to mark aisles from there you assign levels and Bay's in logical sequence in this example we first define the Isles think in terms of streets in your neighborhood next identify the levels the best practice is to start at the ground level and number up this provides easier flexibility for expansion looking up the aisle now define the base back to our neighborhood example think of these as different blocks on the street also note add even numbering from side to side similar to a typical Street numbering system with this information we can easily and without much training find any bin by its address you can also get creative with how and where you apply bin labels for example if you're storing product in high overhead bins you can either invest in long-range scanners to scan labels on the physical bins or you can put all the labels on a lower level to allow for an easier read and scan it's also helpful to angle labels hanging from the ceiling to allow the scanner a better line of sight for the barcode and here's a neat idea I saw for labeling bulk aisles overhead the barcode label is applied to a PVC tube hanging from the ceiling allowing full visibility and line of sight to the barcode from multiple directions I had a customer who needed to label all their bins they received an estimate from a traditional labeling company for five thousand dollars they ended up using a web service to create their own label format then created a PDF version of the label next they sent the PDF files to their local print company and had all the labels printed for five hundred dollars a ninety percent savings now granted creating labels is not an ongoing expense but even small savings Canada I attended a presentation feeling the fire of Kaizen throughout the Lean Enterprise by Mark Preston a lean leadership expert among the many interesting concepts he presented was the idea of a lego lay out a lego lay out is a scaled three-dimensional presentation of a work center or facility the idea is to create a model of the work environment and allow operators to conceptualize the workflow with a model team members can then begin to makes its and wide or local work area process improvement recommendations and always get the employees involved I seen many warehouses where different work sections are cleaned and maintained by operators many times a banner is seen at the end of an aisle saying the aisle or section is maintained by the employee with their picture my guess is this helps ensure employee buy-in and ownership while keeping the work area tidy employee involvement works in most areas for example allow operators at a PAC station to design their work support their conditions in this example it looks like the above average height person in the background is slightly bending to access the computer workstation my guess is at the end of the day he will have a sore lower back I expect the operator would not object to investing in an adjustable height table and make sure tools and packing materials are readily available and have specific storage space when not in use in this example you can see different pre-built box sizes on the right and shipping envelopes and miscellaneous packing supplies on the left on the topic of shipping stations and employee involvement one of my customers demonstrated to me how one plus one can be less than two they frequently shipped multiple individual full cases to customers through a rough analysis they determine two cases taped together cost less to ship than to individual cases of course this assumes both cases are going to the same ship to address this concludes topic one applying 5s next we addressed topic 2 measuring in the warehouse you best-in-class operation do you have a bad warehouse not sure how you stack up against your competitors one of the best ways to answer these questions is to begin the process of benchmarking merriam-webster defines Vence marking as the study of a competitor's product or business practice in order to improve the performance of one's own company basically benchmarking helps determine how good good is benchmarking helps your company to compare how well you are performing against others and identifies whether your company is at a disadvantage whether your benchmarking to increase productivity or reduce operating expenses driving best-in-class performance may increase efficiencies profitability and improve customer service while different facilities will have different metrics a good place to start defining key performance indicators or KPIs is the DC metrics report by George's own dr. Karl man Rob you can contact dr. Karl direct for more information on this report at Karl manra at GC s you IDI you once organization-wide KPIs are in place you should next consider implementing individual performance metrics or standards to support the organizational KPIs and then sent individual performance standards are used to define expectations and are an accurate measure of specific operations a work measurement tool providing an accurate means of comparing what happened to what was supposed to happen a means of to quantify the time required to perform a unit or units of work and a minimum expectancy and quality level required preferred methods help achieve the standards expectations a preferred method is a user-friendly description of the best way to perform a task under normal conditions and is supported by a detailed list of instructions on how to best complete the task these instructions then become the basis for employee training keep in mind the preferred method you may not always be the fastest or easiest way to perform a task but is established to balance productivity with repeatability accuracy and safety for all employees performing the task defining preferred methods can be as easy as documenting what your best performing operator is doing or as sophisticated as performing a detailed engineering analysis with preferred methods in place companies can then begin to experiment with engineered standards and incentive programs to drive productivity into the 95 to 110 percent range however implementing credible engineered standards and fair incentives typically requires investment in technology to support real-time tracking and management next let's review a preferred method example from UPS whenever a UPS driver leaves his seat he places his package car key on a speaking pinky finger and here's why in 1921 UPS began to create preferred methods for its drivers to ensure their safety and get packages to their destinations faster through a root cause analysis they found that misplace Keys was a common problem they designed the preferred method of requiring drivers to place the the truck key on their pinky finger after unlocking the bulkhead door to retain the key ring in hand before returning through the car this frees the drivers mind from thinking about which pocket the keys are in and prevents drivers from accidentally locking the keys in the cargo area will you consider about 70,000 UPS drivers make an average of 120 stops per day all using this method the savings add up and those safe seconds become years UPS is also known for designing out left turns on delivery routes they found they can save significant time and fuel by limiting the time associated with making a left turn in high traffic areas preferred methods can be easily applied in the warehouse resulting in an immediate benefits in this example positioning the pallet closer to the pick bin and the image on the right will result in eliminating four steps per pick for an operator picking a thousand lines per day at 2,000 steps per mile this reduces the operator travel distance by two miles their Fitbit may not like you but the savings will be relevant shift gears to the next stop it can discuss space utilization there are two primary material storage philosophies fixed or dedicated bins and random or floating and dedicated bin storage each individual product is assigned a specific storage bin a given item will always be stored in the specific bin and no other item may be stored in the bin even though the bin may be empty fixed bin storage is analogous to a classroom where each student is assigned a specific seat with random storage any item may be assigned to any available storage bin in Heidemann bin a 1-month might be in b bin be the next and a different item placed into bin a random bin storage is analogous to the assignment of rooms in a hotel when a guest checks in they randomly assigned a room based on the guessed predefined criteria choosing one storage philosophy over another means making trade-offs between utilization accessibility and material handling efficiency cube utilization can be improved with varied storage bin sizes and should be a factor when determining storage media an often overlooked method of optimizing storage space is using varied bin sizes many warehouse operations store and ship a wide variety of product types and sizes to effectively accommodate this variety it is desirable to provide a variety of storage types and sizes trying to utilize only one type of storage media with a variety of products can lead to inefficiencies and low overall cube utilization for example as seen here storing pallets with a consistent 44 inch pallet height in the 60-inch pallet storage openings is wasted space the right balance between varied product bin sizes and flexibility results in improved space utilization on the topic of smaller bin sizes here is something interesting I saw this is a small bin shelving where the customer is picking each's to help them keep the cartons segregated they use the plastic dividers velcroed to the shelf the dividers also serve as a label holder for the bin shirt compares various storage utilization improvement concepts against expected velocity and capacity constraints reducing our wits is a start to optimizing storage space the type of litter up use and the pallet parameters will influence aisle widths however with an assessment of aisle widths you may identify aisles that can be reduced using the same equipment in other cases you might consider the investment of narrow aisle or very narrow aisle industrial vehicles such as a reach or swing mast equipment and as you look at the capacity of your warehouse think in terms of cubic feet versus square feet generally speaking you're paying for overhead space so you might as well use it if you can for example you may be able to add storage bins if you put racking over aisles and create a travel tunnel but remember to factor in your truck clear height the equipment requirements when designing and here's a creative use of space storing pallets over dock doors this is useful if you can plan around dock door activity and the dock door types allow for overhead racking here's another creative use of space storing pallets over dock doors as I mentioned here's another this this is another use in optimizing overhead space this is an example of a pick tunnel in this example the aisle is dedicated to pick each's from the flow racks you can see going down the aisle and overhead is the additional racking and a mezzanine used for storing other cases or each's that can be also be used for another pick line so if you have that ability and that space go ahead and take advantage of it the best way to improve space utilization and pick labor productivity is to not do it don't put product into storage and don't pick orders cross docking is a logistics procedure where products from a supplier or manufacturing plant are distributed directly to a waiting sales order with marginal - no handling or storage time you can potentially reduce storage requirements and improve overall labor productivity by moving product from the receiving dock direct to an outbound order this practice is best supported with some form of technology to match inbound receipts with open outbound orders and to wrap up the discussion on storage space let's take a quick look at a few simple but creative storage concepts in this example the company is providing small specialty products to end-users the products are related to food and beverage so the company wants is very wants to keep a focus on product cleanliness and the presentation these products are stored in the same warehouse and with products that tend to create dust that they came up with the creative and inexpensive way to keep product clean and organized using basic containers you probably use at home in this example the company is using interact storage bins to store small items and improve space utilization notice they also have been shelving at the end of aisles to take further advantage of this space I encourage you to take a look at the end of aisle space to determine if you can keep super high volume product there for picking assuming the bins and people will not interfere with fort truck traffic and here's another example of using in rack storage bins to store smaller items and what I like about this one is that is they added additional lighting in the rack to improve visibility for the operators you want to make certain your facility has adequate lighting especially if operators are picking by paper and here is something interesting I saw at the recent mo tech show it's a major supply chain of materials handling show these are hanging racks that move from side to side it's similar to a sliding closet door and are multiple deep within the rack it could easily be installed on the lower level of selective storage racks to introduce our next topic slotting I want to first set up a brief case study last summer I visited an automotive aftermarket spar supplier in this region and saw these items in these storage bins a common term you'll hear in warehousing best practices is slotting or profiling slotting is defined as the process of identifying the most efficient placement for each item in a distribution center since each warehouse is different proper slotting depends on a facility's unique product of movement and storage characteristics an optimal slotting plan allows workers to pick items more quickly and accurately and reduces the risk of injuries slotting uses ABC profiling 80/20 analysis and cute movement data to keep high moving products in the golden or strike zones benefits of slotting exercise include improved picker productivity better pic accuracy more efficient replenishments ability to better manage the workload across the facility and improved ergonomics and safety here's an example of a product slotted warehouse slotting attempts to keep fast moving items closer to the point of views with slower moving items further away in this warehouse a items would be slotted or stored closer to the shipping dock and in easily accessible bins B items further away and C item as the furthest away of all now with the slotting design theory in mind what is the best shape of a warehouse to keep all product equally distributed around the shipping dock the warehouse would be a circle with shipping in the center and products slotted in a bull's-eye around the shipping department of course the underground tunnels required to get trucks to the shipping dock might be cost prohibitive here's an example of how a slotting strategy can reduce travel time and save money we start with the 1,000 foot long building was shipping on the left with a slotting strategy product is randomly stored throughout the facility and the average pick travel distance is 1,000 feet 500 feet in 500 feet out occurring 100% of the time with slotting let's define a items as 20% of the items generating 80% of the activity and consuming roughly 20% of the space average travel distance for a Adam picks is 160 feet 100 feet in 100 feet out but only occurring 80% of the time B items defined as the next 30% of the items driving 15% of the activity and consuming 30% of the space average travel distance 4b item fix is 105 feet 350 feet in 350 feet out occurring 15% of the time and see items will be the remaining 50% of the items driving 5% of the activity and consuming 50% of the space average travel distance 4c item picks at 75 750 feet in 750 feet out but only occurring 5% of the time in total the average travel distance to pick with a slotted layout is 340 feet 160 plus 105 475 for an average savings of 66% per pick you can also look at slotting from a vertical perspective product is again located based on whether it is a fast medium or slow moving item a items will be will be fast movers and should be the easiest to retrieve B&C items will be slower and or slotted overhead on the bottom shelves the gold inner strike zone refers to the area between the knees and shoulders we're handling items is the easiest and requires the least amount of bending and stretching picking from the strike zone not only increases workers pick speed but with less fatigue pick accuracy will also improve in general picking an item from the strike zone takes fifteen to forty percent less time than picking from other tiers now back to the case study I introduced earlier when I see these items in these bins this time of year and especially in this region I think about opportunities to reach slot change procurement practices and consider distribution requirements planning when setting up a sliding strategy is helpful to understand your order profiles and cube movement we'll cover this topic next if you do nothing else coming out of the session I encourage you to understand your order profiles by analyzing six to twelve months worth of order history and develop a table or order distribution graph similar to this chart for your operations then begin to think about how you can manage to each order type in the omni-channel supply chain a typical warehouse might have at least two to three different order types of profiles this table is from an example high jump customer who sells through their own web store to miscellaneous distributors and through large big-box retail centers we see 15% of their orders or medium-sized multi-line from two to ten lines 35% of the orders or four big-box replenishment and 50% are typical ecommerce single line single unit orders knowing this information will help you implement optimal picking workflows once you know your order profiles you can next perform a cube movement distribution analysis to help assess appropriate storage modes and space requirements cube movement is calculated by multiplying the number of times an item is picked over the specified time period times the cube of one item cube movement analysis will indicate the portion of items falling into pre specified ranges in this example 15% of the items shipped less than 1/10 of a cubic foot per month these items may be good candidates for storage doors or been shelving at the other extreme we see 12% of the items moved more than 1,000 cubic feet per month or nearly 20 pallets these products may be candidates for block stacking double deep rack pushback rack or pallet flow lanes done properly cube movement slotting takes into account both cube movement and item popularity combined these distributions can be used to define the types of storage media to use to balance labor productivity throughput and space utilization in this example items exceeding a certain cube movement popularity threshold are assigned to cart and flow rack items with high cube movement popularity often need to be restocked frequently and require a larger storage bin products with medium and low cube movement popularity might be assigned to drawers bin shelving or carousels depending on popularity and for a more detailed review of order profiling and warehouse design in general I encourage you to read world class warehousing and material handling by another thought leader from Georgia dr. Eadie Frisell with good understanding of your cube movement you can begin to implement our next topic a warehouse within a warehouse a concept closely aligned to cube movement is forward pick in reserved storage using a Ford pick strategy helps you keep smaller volume of inventory and easily accessible bins or forward pick with overstock in remote bins or reserved storage in the strategy the most popular items are stored in forward pick bins in small amounts typically measured in days on hand so order picking can be concentrated within a relatively small area this reduces average travel time and distance and is generally easier to supervise the trade-off is the forward pick bins must be replenished from a bulk zone or reserved area elsewhere in the warehouse where inventory levels are measured in weeks or months on hand a typical for big area for small parts is in an aisle or more of carton flow racks that are easily replenished because it is relatively inexpensive to pick from a forward pick area this this space is particularly valuable when creating a forward picks on considered the space may become congested with picking operators as more picks are concentrated in this area you might counter this effect by putting the highest moving items and multiple bins spread out within the Ford pick zone a forward pick and reserve storage strategy could also be done by placing four big bins on the lower levels of the selected racks with all other overhead product stored in reserve you might visit a Lowe's or Home Depot store to get an idea of this type of storage when the four pick bins reach a minimum define inventory level a replenishment from reserve storage to Ford pick bins needs to occur for pick bin sizing is typically driven by a cube movement analysis as mentioned earlier Ford pick and reserve storage needs to be supported by a solid replenishment strategy a key productivity killer in the warehouse results when an operator goes to a bin to perform a pick there is not enough product in the bin for the operator to complete the task on average it takes four times as long to pick product that is not there and to pick a product from a bin with enough inventory think about it when operated goes to a bin for a pig there's not enough inventory what happens first they look at the pick list a couple times to recheck and make sure they're in the correct bin and looking for the correct product next they search behind the pallet they'll look to the bin at the right look to the bin at the left until they finally give up and call the supervisor which creates yet another productivity drain and finally move on to the next task all of this is a waste of time if you're going to use for pick make certain to have a supporting replenishment strategy in place when developing your Kube movement analysis discussed earlier you will begin to better understand your order profiles and typical picking units of measure for example many hyejeong customers sell through multiple channels including e-commerce and to major retailers these different order types require different picking units of measure for example ecommerce orders are typically each fix while retail store orders are cases and/or pallet picks setting up your warehouse to support these different pick types will improve throughput reduce pick errors and improve overall labor productivity you may also hear this concept referred to as a warehouse with an or house next let's discuss flexible picking strategies to support different order profiles the type of pick process you use is driven by cost handling characteristics and order profile discrete order picking is the most common and the easiest to implement and manage essentially one picker works on one order until it's complete batch pick helps reduce travel time by grouping line item picks from multiple orders together if one item goes to four orders enough of the item for all four orders is picked in aggregate while at the bin the item items are then sorted and a subsequent process a variation of batch pick is cluster picking however this time the operator will take four cases one for each order on a cart and put the items into each case as picked this minimizes the number of touches with adds complexity to the process when designing a cluster pick process consideration needs to be given to the trade-offs between reduced travel time and excess handling requirements at some point there will be diminishing marginal return on cluster size so nicking has multiple Pickers processing Pickers from the assigned zone for the same order then moving the items to the back station where they Arkansas all they did into a shipping case this might help if you are picking large Amazon orders with a short delivery leave time and similar to zone pick is picking fast operators are picking items from their assigned zones however the thick case is move from zone to zone where items are deposited into the case and arrives at the packing station complete this is commonly facilitated with conveyor automation other valuable picking concepts are pre routing and pre posting orders pre routing is the process of mapping out the pic travel path to reduce wasted motion and travel during the pictur pre posting is the process of making certain the inventory is available then in the bin prior to sending the operator to do the pick these two practices will save significant time and effort during the pig process but as talent challenging to efficiently execute without WMS support let's use an example of a grocery shopping list you might have items on the shopping list in random order sometimes the list was developed based off of which item you remembered when there is really no rationale at this point the list serves the purpose of a memory jogger to remind you what to buy the next trip to the store next we look at the flow of picking the as-is grocery list if you process the list as is the pick path in the grocery store would resemble walk in find the milk next go to the pickles from there find the bread eggs our next coca-cola got to have Highjump WMS and finally proceed to the checkout you may admit this looks confusing and chaotic however sorting a list based on travel sequence or pre routing will make the pictur much more efficient walk in find the coca-cola bread pickles WMS eggs milk and proceed to the checkout you might agree this is much more organized and efficient and it works well if you want to keep the milk and eggs refrigerated as long as possible but can you think of an example where this concept might need some tweaking well if you're going to buy a lot of soda you might want to get this lash to keep from having to move the heavy load around the store on the other hand you probably don't want to stack the soda on top of the bread mix same principles apply and considerations should be made when planning your warehouse picking strategies as mentioned earlier pre posting is the process of validating the correct items and quantities are available for picking prior to going out to perform the task as that line in our discussion on replenishment this helps avoid the wasted trip to going to an empty pick bin when though inventory is available the key point is to make sure your inventory records are accurate and enough inventory is available and the big bins to satisfy a demand and we'll close with a few more quarters you might find in our couch this is not a low-hanging fruit concept but I have long been a fan of voice picking in the warehouse to create a hands-free workflow while voice pick has been around for many years this is the first time I saw a job posting specific for a voice picking position this tells me voice picking is now becoming mainstream you might consider storing items generally ordered together near each other you can identify order frequency and correlation during your order analysis back to our grocery store example you might learn when people buy diapers they also buy wet wipes 80% of the time from an efficiency perspective it would benefit you to store these items near each other you may hear this referred to as a product family on the other hand you might want to avoid storing like items together it may ended up causing confusion during the process and impacting the Pickers productivity or worse lowering pick order accuracy resulting in dissatisfied customers in this example I was working with the customer who sold office phones these these are two different model phones they were stored side-by-side as you can see it is very difficult to tell one model from the next you could avoid confusion and increase pic rates by putting a space between the products or put putting a completely different product altogether between the two implementing a vendor compliance program can significantly improve receiving productivity but may be outside of your control as a ward house manager for example you might want product to arrive with product labels and an identification to make it easier for you to receive you could ask your vendors to start labeling products also if you saw our products in three-tier high pallets and your vendors are sending in pallets 5ai you will spend additional labor hours restocking product on pallets to reduce this labor spend you could collaborate with your suppliers to get product stacked three tiers for pallet and if you're using automation in the warehouse you could request your suppliers send you electronic information or advanced ship notices to allow you to better plan for an automated receiving process on to our second the last topic reducing inventory something I like to do during a facility tour is the White Glove test you can randomly look around the inventory for anything that looks like it may have been around for a while if the inventory has excess dust on the boxes chances are it has been there too long alternatively if you plan to come back to the warehouse you could mark one of the cases then when you return maybe a month or two later you can easily see if the marked case is still in stock and if it is has even been moved inventory reduction is an often overlooked process for the warehouse however there are many reasons for keeping excess inventory including customer satisfaction having complete product lines lead time uncertainty for example I have several customers who will have full warehouses at the start of the year due to the Chinese New Year celebration and their planning around expected shipping delays and a less strategic reason is management bonuses bonuses might be affected by excess inventory write-offs so the inventory probably won't go away anytime soon but these reasons should all be compared against the cost of carrying these items in the warehouse the same principles apply to reviewing non stock inventory for example or holiday decorations consuming storage space what about office supplies and why are those old CRT screens taking up pilot storage spins and look at the packing cartons use for shipping why are they even there can you set up daily deliveries from your cart and supplier to free up space and possibly set up vendor managed inventory programs and here's another interesting practice I saw at a customer they were working in a non automated environment and wanted more visibility into aging inventory they decided to use different colors shrink wrap to represent different receipt date ranges and easily get an idea from a from a quick view of the warehouse when product was received and more importantly how long it had been in the warehouse you can see the different color palettes in the storage racks and here's another pallet height Tokioka idea I saw at a customer their outbound pallets had to be a maximum stack height to fit in a trailer rather than guessing if the pallets were built too high they would use this mark on this column as at the shipping dock as a high through France again a very simple yet highly usable concept while there are many more low-hanging improvement ideas we could discuss for consideration in your facility the final category on our list has get involved more specifically get involved with learning and observing in today's business environment seldom can anyone afford to live in isolation and not share ideas regardless of where you work there should be many ways for you to get involved and find out other best practices going on I encourage you to engage with your local professional associations they typically have meetings and networking events and things that you can attend and share ideas in summary there are many simple changes you can make to your operation to improve efficiency whether it's focusing on the fundamentals collaborating with your suppliers or getting a third party perspective I trust there is something here you can make you can take to make a difference in your operations if you if you can't make a difference make a pie because everyone likes pie so thank you for your time and you can contact me or greg direct if you have any questions greg okay thank you so much Chris excellent presentation we do have a couple minutes left so if you have any questions at all just type your question into the chat box there I do have a question for you here Chris are there things we as a company can do internally yeah the answer is yes a lot of these things you can do you can start looking at your own order profiles you have the data available you can start doing the cleanliness programs those types of things are readily available if you want to get other perspectives benchmarking you know I'd encourage you maybe you can check out check out a consultant or somebody like that but yeah there's a lot of these ideas I would suggest you can can start small and think big as a follow up the same person ask what are your top recommendations yeah so it's good to have one or two I think that the best thing is focus on the first thing we started about its cleanliness and organization everything should have its have a place I think you should make sure nothing is sticking out in the aisles of pilots put away well I think just implementing cleanliness and an organization as a part of your culture will go a long way and then the second thing is it's really take a look at your data look at your order profiles and determine what different if you have small orders large orders what the combinations are because once you understand your what I'll call your warehouse behavior profile you'll be able to set up and manage effectively for Chris is how can i implement changes without additional space to organize for place racks loose stock etc yeah that's a loaded question I think we if you had less inventory that might be might be the first step obviously if you can get it because if you're if you're storing product that you're not moving frequently that would be my first first pass again having visibility into what's coming in and possibly what's going on would give you a better chance to optimize around the inventory as well so that would be my first thing is look after your inventory levels and see if you're storing things too long that maybe don't need to be there okay great do you like great questions here while we just have like a Minard to limits launch into a quick polling question just take a second just to answer we just have three short polling questions while we wait for some file questions another question that came in Kris how frequently should weary slot our warehouse well I'll give you the consulting answer is it depends it's first you can depend on the size of your warehouse larger warehouses will consume more travel time and smaller warehouses will not not be so as travel in ten its intensive so they probably don't need to be slotted as frequently and a lot of it depends on seasonality as well but you know you might just start taking a look at again as you're looking at your order profiles to take a look at the top 10% of your product and maybe move that closer up to the slot closer to the point of use okay great question there I think we just have time for just one more question here this one just came in what influences are changing I'm sorry what impresses are driving change and the warehouse today I want to call it the Amazon effect but the biggest driver is as e-commerce or you may refer to as omni-channel but you know if you're selling you know cases or pallets today there's a chance that you'll you could be selling each's within the next month or two so the key thing is I want you to have flexibility whether it's around your system or around your processes to be able to support the growing chance of selling through e-commerce channels that would be they'll be my biggest bit biggest tip okay great that's all the time we have with Snowbird over but I want to thank everyone for attending say thank you so much Chris for presenting we will be sending out an email a develop if someone has additional questions and you have Chris's information as well thank you Greg thanks Erin have a great recipe thanks again

Channel: iCepts Technology Group, Inc.

Views: 128,511

Rating: 4.8772802 out of 5

Keywords: Warehouse Management Systems, WMS Software, Warehousing Systems, Supply Chain Management Tips, Tips for better warehousing

Id: ThL9N7mvaiQ

Length: 45min 46sec (2746 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2017