If you really want to have an impact on bottom-line results , then look at the supply chain as a whole and not just at the distribution center. Only by looking across the boundaries of our own world, we can really make a change.| Growth trajectory: Highly Competitive Warehouse Management |
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In warehouses and distribution centers lot of gains are possible, although practice often is unruly: IT projects exceed budgets and provide little improvement, supply chain partnerships do not work out and managers lack time for process improvement due to the daily hustle. We have developed a three-step improvement methodology that avoids these pitfalls. The method is called Highly Competitive Warehouse Management and has as its central question how the warehouse can contribute to a structural improvement of the company results. The three steps are: 1. Create awareness 1. Create Awareness
2.Set Goals
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Do you feel that you are mostly busy with firefighting and no time is left for structural improvement? Highly Competitive Warehouse Management helps you to break with this cycle and goes forward. Within one year you create a competitive distribution center and within three years and it is best-in-class.
These pitfalls often arise when managers want to introduce innovations for which the warehouse is not ready yet. Hence, we first look at the maturity of the warehouse before we start improvement actions. The 
Warehouses often play a minor role within companies. An warehouse that is an equal to other departments can greatly contribute to the competitiveness of a company. This requires that logistics managers look beyond the warehouse walls. Which opportunities do you see? What do you want to achieve? Set revolutionary goals for the next three years and get the support of senior management.
Each improvement project is a change project. A major risk of improvement projects is that the operation does not adopt the change. When implementing a new IT system in the warehouse, one cannot see it separate from changes in processes, in the attitude of the people in the workplace and in the role of the warehouse within the enterprise. So look at the big picture and strive for gradual evolutionary growth.
Highly Competitive Warehouse Management is a unique approach that helps logistics managers to improve the performance of the warehouse in a successful manner. The approach aims at evolutionary growth that gradually increase the maturity of the warehouse. The underlying principle is that certain improvement actions only take effect when the warehouse has the right maturity. Highly Competitive Warehouse Management considers four stages of maturity.
At the Effective phase we will create transparency in the operation. We use the transparency to streamline processes and to manage the operation in a better way. In short, the warehouse is managed on the basis of facts rather than gut feelings and personal preferences! In addition, this stage lays the foundation for improvements in later stages. Without a proper organization of the internal processes, major software implementations and supply chain projects often are doomed to failure.
Next is the Responsive phase. This is the phase where intelligent IT is introduced for the planning and control of the warehouse. These tools provide insight in the workload, available capacity and deadlines, in order to improve the utilization of staff and resources. This helps the warehouse to anticipate on variations in order patterns and volume fluctuations. The warehouse, in fact, becomes chaos tolerant!
Read the practical case study on how the