The Importance of Being Important

“If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.” 
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

A couple of years after I joined TriFactor, we were given copies of the famous book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, written by Dale Carnegie.  At the time, I had known who Dale Carnegie was and the famous book he wrote but I had never read it.  So dutifully I read it and it made absolute sense to me, making the complexity of interpersonal relationships simpler to grasp and digest.  I enjoyed it so much I first gave it to my two older sons and asked them to read it and then paid my two younger sons to read it.  You know how that goes, but in the end I was able to make sure they all read it. 

The book is full of wonderful lessons and historical examples of their honest and effective use.  I am gravitated to the chapter of the book that begins with the statement “He who can do this has the whole world with him.  He who cannot walks a lonely way”   It speaks to me and the book continues with “So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it” How true it is in our everyday lives when we meet customers and get so excited to talk about our competence and our list of accomplishments which are important to us and important in general when really it is our customers that should be doing the talking. 

We should strive for our customers to do the talking.  How else will we know what is important to them?  In a distribution environment, there are many variables and definitions of success which are unique to the customer and unique to the main person responsible for the project.  You may deal with the owner who is interested in reducing labor, increase efficiency or stay in his facility longer to avoid the expense of moving to a bigger facility.  You may be dealing with a Distribution Manager who wants to improve customer service, improve the performance on company operational metrics and prove his/her worth to the company.  No matter what it is that our customers want, we can’t give it to them if we don’t make it our first priority to find out what it is. 

Difficult as it may be, sometimes we must suspend what we want in order to influence our customers to walk our way. 

For more information from Greg, view his page at www.trifactor.com/greg

Honesty

In the long run, I believe that honesty is definitely the best policy. One can get away by being dishonest for a short term, but ultimately, honesty is what pays.

Kapil Dev

It is human nature to want to present the most rosy of pictures when we have a problem.  However tough it may feel or seem, honesty serves our customers best.

In the material handling world we have many facets of a project to consider as we design a new system:

• Manufacturer’s lead times.
• Installation estimates to include environmental or odd hour requirements.  
• Equipment performance to specifications required for speed and accuracy.  
• Software systems compatibility and communications.  
• Mechanical, electrical and software scope changes. 

Earning the trust of our customers is always the ultimate goal.  While most projects are accompanied with their set of challenges, it is always in the customer’s best interest to understand what the challenges are without a layer of sugarcoating on it.  Timely, honest reporting of a concern and the plan to address the concern will ultimately maintain customer trust even though it may be temporarily tense.   

Most project issues may be overcome though engineering to include technology modifications.   However, putting your main customer contact in a bind by not providing timely warning of any issues is difficult to overcome.  An honest firsthand report on the status of the project will allow the customer to plan for any operational changes in a timely manner if required.  Additionally, if there are any challenges that may affect the schedule, bring a plan B to demonstrate that you are engaged to meet and manage the original expectations. 

The saying is true “Nothing is more important than a customer”.  Speaking honestly before during and after a project will demonstrate the importance we place on our customers.   

 

For more information from Greg, view his page at www.trifactor.com/greg

 

It’s Just Rack

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity. - Douglas Horton

I have heard customers say many times “It’s just rack”.  To be sure, rack is equipment, treated as a commodity that should be cheap in cost and quick to purchase and install.  However, like most things that appear easy but are found to be complex after further inspection, rack can become troublesome very quickly.

On the surface, rack is simple.  When looking at it rack appears to be merely frames, beams and maybe some wire decks or cross bars.  However, it requires further assessment. 

Our storage rack holds a myriad of products and they vary from full pallets of all types to individual item storage.  As the loads we store can be of significant weight, we must have a safe means of storing the weight while using as much of available cubic space as possible “Safely”. 

If you access YouTube, you can find videos of rack accidents where the beams and frames were overloaded beyond rated capacity, under-protected from damage and misapplied. 

So let’s look out for several things when planning our rack system so we can be efficient while being safe. 

·         What kind of load do you expect to hold and is it palletized or individual items?  What is the anticipated weight per rack beam level?

·         How many beam levels will be in a bay? Are there different weights anticipated for each level of the bay or is it standard?  What are the beam level dimensions? It matters to the overall capacity of the frame.

·         Are your pallets of consistent quality?  If not, perhaps wire decks or decking is required.

·         Be honest with your employee assessment.  Are they rough with the equipment when handling pallets?  Have you experienced damage in the past?  Should we make provisions to protect the frames columns and end of aisles?

·         Will the equipment be in a cold room or freezer?

·         Are you in a zip code with seismic ratings that may require larger footplates or aisle ties?

·         Do you anticipate the need for sprinkler coverage?

·         Are hazardous material barriers required?

·         What type of forklift do you use and what is the maximum height it can reach to store and retrieve pallets? (Companies have bought rack only to find out their forklifts could not reach the top level of the rack)

·         What is the turning radius of your forklift?  Aisle sizes matters.

·         What kind of product density do we need?  Many SKUs or a few SKUs with high volume. 

Some companies buy used rack.  As such, do you know the frame and beam capacities of what you are buying?  Do you know where it’s been and subjected to in the form of loads and abuse?

In the end, rack is a commodity.  However, it must be designed in advance with plenty of detail about what you plan to store and how you plan to keep your associates safe and equipment damage free.   

For more information from Greg, view his page at www.trifactor.com/greg