For well over 100 man years, we have visited distributors throughout the world of all sizes, types and product/customer mixes.
We have found some older facilities do an outstanding job with warehousing and materials handling, and some new “modern” facilities are not very efficient.
The age of a facility, the neighborhood and product mix have little to do with the relative efficiency of the operations. Instead management commits some of the 10 most common errors. Even if your operation is running these errors will pop up and devastate profitability:
1. Poorly trained personnel
Wage or salary is not indicative of the quality of the employee or their output. Everyone wants more money but it’s the rare individual who takes a raise as an incentive and moves to higher productivity.
What is more important is to hire the right people (initially attracted by a decent pay check) then give them the tools and training to maintain a good attitude, enjoy what they are doing, and be productive. It is more profitable to establish a training program and then follow through to check on their progress. People respect what you inspect, not just expect. Good employees are not found; they are developed.
2. Poor loading facilities
Everything product that comes in and out of the building must pass through a loading dock or loading area. Poor or nonexistent docks add to overhead with redundant handling and lost labor. But, all is not lost.
By becoming more efficient in staging areas you can overcome the lost handling efforts. Keeping staging areas open, neat and organized; encouraging personnel to turn over the dock space; and organizing the space and labor can overcome inadequacies of the physical facility. Often all that is required are some simple enhancements such as lines on the floor or a pallet rack to segregate staging by customer, truck run, etc.
