Warehousing Diagnosis

You go to the doctor and tell her that your warehouse hurts. She asks you to lie down and answer the following questions:

Do you want to increase your warehouse productivity?

Measure your current productivity and set up an aspiration level jointly with your key warehouse personnel. Document your processes and identify opportunities for streamlining. Update your processes, organisation and control rules accordingly. Report the measured progress to the warehouse staff.

Do you want to reduce your cycle times?

Document your administrative and physical processes from order intake to delivery. Determine how much time an order spends on each of these processes. Identify which processes may be accelerated and how this is achieved. Start with the improvements that generate the largest gain against the least effort until you achieve the aspired cycle time reduction.

Do you want to improve your order accuracy?

Measure your order accuracy, i.e. orders that arrive on time with the correct quantities of the right products in the right packaging and with correct documentation. You can measure this by performing random checks before shipping as well as by categorising customer complaints. Identify causes for errors in orders and focus on these. Remember that it is hard to provide a good service if your suppliers perform poorly.

Do you want to improve your inventory accuracy?

Set up a stock taking procedure. Identify the main causes for inventory differences and solve these. Focus your stock taking activities increasingly on the problem areas.

If it still hurts after six weeks, please make an appointment with a specialist.