Good Luck Is a Residue of Preparation - Jack Youngblood

As we celebrate the annual St Patrick’s Day festivities, it’s a good time to talk about luck. Good luck is indeed the residue of preparation.  Distributors and manufacturers alike must continuously prepare themselves for changing tastes and expectations of faster delivery and cheaper products.  No longer do our customers need to ask themselves if they’re getting a good deal because our phones now serve as a bar code scanner that can provide multiple prices and delivery options for the exact same item.  In our world, customers know the rules of thumb for cost per linear feet of conveyor by type and cost per pallet position. 

So how do we prepare ourselves so good luck may follow? 

·         Do you know the dimensions and weights of your SKUs so you may do an automatic comparison of the actual weight to of an order to the expected weight of the order?

o   Reduces overages

o   Reduces returns

o   Reduces omissions

o   Reduces unit of issue problems

o   Most importantly, it improves your customer experience

·         When you walk through your Plant or Distribution Center, are you using rack for pallets, individual cases individual SKU’s and everything in between?

o   Are there big pockets of space where there is no product?

o   Are SKUs mixed in with each other so it’s cumbersome to pick, put away and cycle count?

o   Do you have a lot of cubic space available but you are not sure how to take advantage of it? 

·         Do your smaller SKUs fall between the openings in wire decks? Is there a lot of product on the floor?

·         Are you using standard cases for all shipments, paying unnecessary shipping costs for air?

·         Are you using one shipper for all your outbound orders or do you rate shop for the best deal?

·         Are you applying shipping labels manually? 

·         Do you have record of products shipping from your facility in case of customer complaints of missing orders?

o   Pictures, date time stamp, bar code scan?

o   Are you dealing with inbound cases and bags with no bar codes on them? 

If these questions sound familiar, let’s prepare together so we can make our own luck. 

 

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

 

 

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

A Conveyor Carol

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the warehouse

Not a roller was turning, no lights to be dowsed.

The forklifts were parked by the stations to charge

A day off from pallets that are getting too large.

The panels were switched off to take a good sleep

The DC was silent, not even a peep.

When through the e-commerce site came several mass orders

I ran to the server to check the disorder.

Away to the iphone I flew with a flash

The labor, the power, the postage and cash.

The silence was deafening as I made several calls

My head on my desk as no answers at all.

When what to my ears and eyes should perceive

Responses from teammates on Christmas Eve.

“On Jimmy! On Mikey! On Kathy!  On Sue!

“To the electrical panel, to the sorter downstairs”

“Now ship away! Ship away! Ship away all”

As the last box departed I let out a sigh

Another Christmas arrival with no need to cry!

 

Happy Holidays from TriFactor!!
www.TriFactor.com

 

“Seeing the forest through the trees”

It is hard to see the forest through the trees sometimes.  In our world (Distributors and Manufacturers), the trees that block our view are the pressing demands on a Distribution or Plant Manager.  You all know them well as they are routine in nature:

·         Hiring enough and the right type of associates.

·         Making sure we are meeting our customer service expectations.

·         Keeping up with new products, new acquisitions and promises made by our sales force.

·         Finding the space to accommodate growing business requirements.

·         Adapting to increased e-commerce needs that accompany society’s changing purchasing behaviors.

When you are blocked by the trees, we all tend to handle these demands ourselves using the path of least resistance.  As our SKUs increase in volume and in number, it is easy to continue to find empty spaces, hire new people and do things the same way until it starts to affect our customers.  Once our customers become affected and the top and/or bottom line reduces, the praise you once received for doing more with less is replaced with questions about how you are going to fix it. 

Although the economic slowdown is continually in the news, I have met more than a few companies that are growing 10, 20 and 30 percent year over year.  Many of these companies do not employ the sophisticated metrics developed and available to larger companies so where do we begin?

An essential beginning is to understand our SKU’s (Stock Keeping Units).  It is valuable to know the dimensions of your product (length, width, height and weight).  Additionally, the same dimensions for the case we traditionally pick out of if other than case quantities.  Since most companies know their sales data, we look to understand the demand and the size requirements to store and pick. If you don’t have time to do this, hire someone to help you see the forest.   

Stepping back from tress, looking at your product speed, dimensions, replenishment requirements and future growth projections will allow you to redesign your picking operation to replenish less, travel less, use floor space better and reduce current and future labor. 

If you are blinded by the trees, hire a lumberjack to help you cut them down.

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

Examine First Diagnosis Later

Seldom can you walk into a doctor’s office and get a diagnosis for what ails you.  Rather the doctor asks you a series of questions runs tests and even sends you to get blood drawn to understand what’s happening on the inside.  Yet when important automation decisions are made at distribution centers and manufacturing facilities, solutions are often provided as a result of a diagnosis based on what the customer specifically asks for or some technology that is applied based on some other company’s operation.  Important questions are not asked, and the customers end up only with what they asked for. 

So some may say “Give the customer what they asked for” and “The customer is always right”.  Both are wise statements if you wish to stay in business, but don’t we owe a deeper responsibility to people who entrust us with large financial investments and sometimes their careers? 

If the answer is yes, then it is necessary to understand our customers more and further examination is required before we diagnose.  Beyond the identification of product dimensions, cartons or pallets per minute or lines picked per hour lay important questions.

·    What are the most critical aspects of any potential transition to automation? These answers are often different depending on who you speak with.

·    Are there any future growth anticipated through acquisitions or through e-commerce business growth?

·    Is the primary goal to reduce labor, increase throughput, increase productivity, reduce operational footprint, extend stay at existing facilities, increase accuracy, improve safety or reduce theft?

·    Are there parallel software initiatives such as transitions to a new Warehouse Management System or Warehouse Control System that will require interfacing with and automation initiatives?

As we get the answer to these questions we must also be aware of a great degree of customization that has been increasing over the last 5 years.  Customization is increasingly difficult issue for distribution centers and manufacturers to plan for and adapt to.  Big box retailers expect their product in specific pallet configurations, labeled and wrapped uniquely, with various product staging times corresponding to transportation scheduling.  Particularly in low SKU high volume operations, users want mixed pallets that have layers of different products and sometimes cases of different products that allow them to only stock what they need.  Couple this increase in customization with an increasing consumer appetite to purchase items online with options available for shipping speed, specific carrier selection and special packaging and you have system requirements that must be versatile and modular to keep up with changing customer market dynamics.

If we don’t ask enough right questions the examination will not be thorough enough to properly diagnose what type of system is best for your customer.  Even if you provide exactly what your customer asked for it is not good enough.  Uncomfortable discussions based on challenging the status quo can open details that will result in good quality systems that are built for growth, flexibility and responsive customer service.