‘If you don’t know where you want to go, then it does not matter which way you go.’- An Alice in Wonderland inspired line hold true for warehouse management.
Welcome To The Blog
The Business Value of Master Data Management
Businesses, both small and big, have a lot of data associated with many aspects of the operation. Inefficient data management practices lags business growth due to unreliable data being provided thus limiting its potential to make key decisions based on insights and anticipate any future changes. Data management has evolved to being one of the key management aspects of any business. In a business, data changes over time: acquisitions and corrections are being made in multiple entry points for products, customers, employees, vendors, and so on. Master data management (MDM) stores all the data in a single system and synchronizes data acquisitioned from several source systems and provides most accurate, timely and relevant version of truth about essential business entities.
Innovation versus Problem-Solving
Problem-solving and innovation are two essential business processes that we need to master in order to thrive and prosper in the face of the many and varied challenges that we face.
The trouble is that while both processes are necessary, if we spend too much time fixing problems around the place we leave too little time for thinking about how we are going to do things better in future.
Your Productivity and Economic Growth
Productivity growth is one of the three fundamental drivers of economic growth. The other two drivers are capital growth and labour growth. Because in advanced economies such as those of Western Europe and North America labour growth and capital growth no longer grow so fast, productivity growth is now THE major driver of economic growth.
Top 5 Tips for Improving Warehouse Performance
The performance of warehousing operations whether in manufacturing, distribution or logistics will significantly impact both your top line and bottom line business outcomes.
Here are my top 5 tips for agressively driving dramatic performance improvement in warehouse operations in record time.
Improve Picking Productivity
Whether in manufacturing, distribution or logistics services, the picking and preparation of orders in warehouse operations takes up between 50% and 70% of all labour employed in the warehouse. Consequently, any drive to improve productivity and output performance in the warehouse must prioritize order picking to the top of the list.
Warehousing Priorities: Get them Right
Top class warehousing is an essential competence in any successful business in the 21st century for three main reasons.
1. Warehousing impacts business top-line performance. The warehouse is the last step before the customer and your last chance to gets things right in the customer’s eyes.
Warehousing Case Study: Massive Improvement in Operating Efficiency
THE CHALLENGE
A manufacturing client in the pharmaceutical sector was about to embark on a major uplift in finished goods output and called on us to help them to work with their logistics service provider to help them to prepare their warehouse facility operationally for the throughput volume increase of approximately 25%.
The warehouse operated offsite by the logistics service provider received finished product straight from production for storage and later despatch to markets around the world. Added complexity derived from the fact that the same facility and warehouse team was used to receive raw materials from suppliers and for selection for just-in-time delivery to the production plant on a daily basis.
Initial thoughts on the part of the manufacturer and the logistics service provider were that an additional overlapped evening shift would need to be introduced in order to cope with the increased throughput thus resulting in increased labour and overhead costs.
Warehousing Case Study: Maximizing Return in Investment in a Finished Goods Warehouse
THE CHALLENGE
A multinational manufacturer in the food sector asked for our help to optimise their investment in a new finished goods warehouse alongside their manufacturing plant. The warehouse was to be used to store finished product and to pick and despatch orders to markets around the world.
The product was bulky, palletized and made in batch sizes that ranged from 1 pallet to more than 50 pallets. When there are batch sizes in a stock profile that are larger than 12 to 15 pallets like this, there is an opportunity to increase the utilisation of available cubic space in the warehouse by using high density storage solutions such as Push-Back racking and Gravity Flow Racking.