Expectations

Expectation is the root of all heartache…..William Shakespeare

Expectations are a funny thing.  From the time we are children, people expect us to do and be many things.  In our workplace we are told to manage our customer’s expectations.  People we expect things, or behaviors from, disappoint us sometimes. 

Often we believe we know what someone is expecting us to do or provide for them.  We think we know what our customers want based on what they state their needs or issues are and to be truthful, we probably have seen similar scenarios and fill in the blanks ourselves.  But do we really know what someone is thinking?  Aren’t one person’s expectations different from another?  Doesn’t each person’s experience, personality and standards set their level of expectations?

I am sure we all purchased things before and have felt:

·         This isn’t what I thought I was getting.

·         Why is it taking so long?  I thought it would be done by now.

·         This isn’t as robust as what I thought.

·         I thought you were responsible for this; why am I paying for it?

In my world, missing expectations can be very expensive.  Investing in a large material handling systems is no small undertaking.  Jobs can be lost and professional futures ruined if capital investments are not managed wisely and expectations for return on investment not met. 

Of course we can say we need to make sure details are clearly communicated in terms of what you are buying, how much you are buying it for and when you need it.  Approval drawings, equipment lists, pictures, and operational descriptions are necessary to quote “Manage Expectations”.  However, I submit, it is not enough. 

It is not sufficient to merely give a customer something they asked for.  You have to know why they need it.  What will it do for them above and beyond storing, picking and distributing more widgets efficiently?  Why is it important for the change to take place both operationally and personally?  How they like do to buy things and most importantly, what level of detail will they provide? Even detailed RFP/RFQs do not provide the necessary information you need to meet expectations.

Spending time with your customers and asking questions about the “why” in additional to the “what” will help you meet your customer’s expectations.      

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

 

Culture

“Engaging the hearts, minds, and hands of talent is the most sustainable source of competitive advantage.”  from Greg Harris, Quantum Workplace

I met with a customer recently who spent most of our time together discussing the subject of “Culture”.  He discussed at length the time it takes to prepare a team to usher in new technology properly and the pitfalls of overwhelming your people. In essence, the people aspect must be considered as much as value of the solution. 

Often in the sales process, we focus so intently on delivering solutions to our customer’s efficiency problems; we don’t consider the associates who must implement the solutions we sell.  Although many of our warehouse and manufacturing team members are talented, dedicated and engaged, dropping a high tech solution in their laps often creates frustration, anxiety and a sense of powerlessness. 

As a remedy to this problem, perhaps a more phased approach may be considered that presents technology at digestible bites.  The phased approach can take many forms. From a material handling perspective, the focus can begin on areas of your facility that involve excessive handling of product or long lengths of travel in the picking process or in the transport of orders from picking to packaging. 

Getting your associates comfortable with the benefits of automation and enabling them to see the potential to make their tasks easier engages them in the process of removing the inefficiencies out of your operation.  As your facility performance metrics start to incorporate the results of smaller automation initiatives, your associates will more willingly embrace future larger capital investments that may include more sophisticated automation.

Usher in a new culture of continuous improvement but let’s make sure we bring everyone along for the ride!

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

 

BUZZERS, ALARMS, LIGHTS OH MY !

Walk into most distribution centers and manufacturing facilities with automation and you will hear a cacophony (my $5 dollar word) of screeches, alarms, bells and grinding.  You will see indicators, status lights, digital displays, stack lights, power displays and a host of visual means of understanding your equipment and its performance. 

With this bevy of sight and sound stimulators, we ask our operators, supervisors, maintenance technicians and front line managers to know what’s going on and to keep production or distribution running at max efficiency.  When a piece of equipment fails or cases jam or someone in the 500,000 sq ft facility pulls an e-stop, hopefully by accident, we expect immediate resolution of the problem.  After all, we spent good money on this equipment and it should perform as advertised. 

If you look at the technological advances in the devices we use at home, we see the migration to appliances with the ability to communicate with each other and with you the homeowner.  Ultimately, the goal is for the ultimate convenience of knowing the status of our home equipment and adjusting the settings to make our lives easier and more comfortable….this is debatable but that’s for a different blog. 

However, shouldn’t we have a central means of understanding what is going on with our distribution center and manufacturing automation?   Are you using the tools available with Human Machine Interface Software to simplify identification of issues such as jams, emergency stops, full lines, motor failure, faulty photo-eyes, and a host of other typical issues?  Are you tracking and reporting diverts statistics, full divert line times, successful scans and bar code quality?  Most importantly, are you managing your equipment so you can see things that will happen in advance, use your associates properly, and measure the performance of your equipment?

I don’t want my refrigerator communicating with me but I wouldn’t mind my distribution center or manufacturing facility telling me a thing or two. How about you?

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

For a quart of Ale is a meal for a King - William Shakespeare

To be sure there are many among us who would love to be a beer distributor.  All that glorious liquid stacked as high as the ceiling, packed to the gills with every flavor for every palate.  And in the quest to have a beer for every pallet, how do you organize the traditional high volume brands with the latest and greatest craft beer?  What product should be stacked?  What product to be stored at a specific temperature?  How do you re-introduce returned product?  How do I keep my order pickers as efficient as possible?  How do I keep my customers happy?  How do I deal with slower moving products that use up my warehouse space and slow my pickers down?  How do I keep my main brewers happy?  So many questions, considerations and planning to deal with, perhaps a beer distributor’s life is harder than I thought. 

As there are many financial analysts from within and outside the beer industry looking at trends and forecasting the future, there are several points to take away as you examine your existing beer distribution warehouses and plan for new ones. 

·         As people age they tend to drink less beer.  According to analysts, baby boomers and retirees are a larger percentage of the population than young adults. 

·         Liquor and wine sales are rising at the expense of beer sales.  How do you slot the products that are ancillary to beer?

·         Craft beers are increasing with 2,700 breweries in the US alone and how you slot these cases and pallets will need to be different than the main brands?  As craft beers usually cost more they are big potential profit generators.  Being able to store pick and ship them efficiently is a competitive advantage. 

·         Other non-alcoholic products such as water and mixers are growing but are small in terms of overall demand.  You need to carry it but how do you store it?

Beer demand and tastes are changing rapidly.  Doesn’t it make sense to develop storage, picking and shipping plans that are based on product velocity analysis and accurate slotting?  Understanding the dimensions of your product, coupled with the use of sales data that reflects the demand for each SKU will allow you to store pick and ship the right product in the most efficient manner.  Done properly, slotting your facility will reduce labor, maximize the use of available warehouse space and most importantly of all, allow you to examine it at regular intervals to keep up with the changing tastes dynamic.

Here’s to great success in 2014 to all the beer distributors out there as I do my part to help keep you in business.

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

 

Stuffing 10 lbs of SKUs Into a 5 lb Bag

In my garage we seem to keep buying things and storing them but never seem to remove anything.  Once in a while I realize that some of the things stored there will never be needed or used. 

So too you see it in distribution centers where SKU growth has made it difficult to efficiently replenish, pick and manage inventory.  So what can we do about it?

A good first step is to understand the dimensions of our products.  At a minimum we should know the length, width, height and weight of the unit size we pick from whether it be cased or individual picks.  If you don’t know the SKU volumes then schedule an effort monthly to capture this information using a Cubiscan which you can rent or purchase. 

A close second step is to understand how fast our SKUs move.  Typically, you will want to look at a year’s worth of data so that you may account for any seasonality or for unnatural spikes in demand.  Understanding how fast your SKUs move allow you to store them in the right type of picking media (rack, shelving, pick modules or storage and retrieval systems such as carousels or more advanced systems such as mini-loads and AS/RS). 

It is wise to have assigned locations for your SKUs.  Assigning multiple SKUs to one large location often causes many issues:

·        Order pickers have difficulty finding the appropriate item to pick for the respective order. If you have item in cases that look alike only distinguishable by item number and they are collocated in the same SKU location, miss-picks will surely follow.  

·        Replenishment operators need to efficiently find and place the respective SKUs where they belong.  If it is difficult to know where to put it, operators will just use their best judgment.   A more systematic approach is necessary. 

·        Cycle counting is never a fun thing but imagine doing it with SKUs all mixed up in a collocated location?  Having to pick up unit picks and looking at code designations to get the correct SKU inventoried is expensive and a waste of labor.    

 
Curing these issues often is not an expensive proposition.  Rather it requires a little distribution center elbow grease.  Most Warehouse Management Systems homegrown or otherwise can handle assigning SKUs to what level you require.  SKUs can be measured and recorded for future slotting use.

Finally, SKUs that are seldom used or never used can be relocated to more remote areas of the distribution center to allow for the prime movers to be picked efficiently.

 

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

“Waste Not Want Not”

Often we accept the waste in our packaging as the cost of doing business. For companies who are shipping a myriad of products, it’s tough to consistently select the most efficient shipping carton.  As a result:

·         We pay for cartons that are underutilized

·         We fill up the unused space with void fill that is not free

·         We use void fill machines that can be expensive to buy, service and maintain

·         The postage paid on the case is more than what it should be due to extra weight

·         We buy totes then use our associates to dump the contents out and transfer to a case using their intuition

Continuing on this course is an option to be sure.  However, in many packaging and shipping operations, we can improve on this waste by knowing the characteristics of what we are shipping.  The length, width, height and weight of our individual SKUs are crucial information.  Armed with this information, we can calculate the expected volume of a given order.  If we know the anticipated volume, we can select the right shipping container at the beginning of the picking process using carton weight calculations. The benefits include:

·         Potentially reduce the width of the case conveyor through the elimination of totes

·         Reduce or eliminate the void space in our shipping cartons

·         Reduce labor required to audit, transfer and process void fill

·         Reduce corrugated stock costs

·         Identify mis-picks through weight validation

 As we all know, there is continuous pressure on margins and a focus on waste may be the edge you need to reduce your unit costs. 

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