Most Recent Articles

Last week the Washington Post did some excellent work calculating a number of key statistics around the logistics of Santa’s big night of Christmas Eve (See “The Breathtaking Scale of Santa Claus’ Task on Christmas Eve - by Philip Bump”).

Twenty years ago, making a DC/warehouse “green” was almost universally a very low priority if it made the list of near or long-term goals at all. As the digital age was just starting to ramp itself up with the advent of e-commerce, managers were more focused on the building blocks needed to transform their facilities to raise the volume, speed and variety of services they perform. But while the last twenty years have been almost exclusively a race for adapting the business into a speedier, direct-to-customer version of it’s pre-internet self, prioritizing factors like energy use, reduced packaging, etc. is becoming a desirable skill-set and focus of KPIs.

Product Development is a challenge for any business, but especially for small manufacturers. While there are reams of data and statistics out there showing you how many products fail every year, and how daunting the percentages are (and to be honest, there is a lot of disagreement on these numbers), there is relatively little mention of the challenges of coming up with your new product in the first place.

One area of staff retention and warehouse productivity that is frequently overlooked is the effect of ergonomics on production. Consciously or not, ergonomics pervades every aspect of facility management.

While some managers still look at ergonomics as a form of regulatory burden or reactionary response to a problem, successful leaders understand its ongoing importance. A proactive ergonomic focus helps organizations to maximize productivity and improve employee retention.

Prioritizing ergonomics drives management innovation in numerous ways.

Staffing, employee retention, and productivity are hot topics during an economy with a low unemployment rate of 3.7%. In August we shared the benefits of Big Ass Fans, and in July we shared how to reduce employee turnover and improve productivity.

There has been much written about finding and retaining happy warehouse workers. These issues are not going away as eCommerce is expected to grow.  But, who is going to do the work? It has never been more important to have the right equipment which includes an advanced warehouse cart with portable power.

Like most logistics operations, yours might point to “receiving” as the main starting point in your operation. Either because it’s a process that often begins earlier in the day with the overnight arrival of trucks delivering products from all parts of the country, or simply because it’s the point in which materials enter your facility thus setting the stage for all other processes.

"Measured in time and money - order picking is without doubt the most costly activity in a typical warehouse. It is also the activity that plays the biggest role for customer satisfaction with the warehouse – and in the final analysis the entire supply chain." - Professor René de Koster