INSIGHTS · Operations
Every published Insights post tagged Operations.
You don't need a stopwatch team to know what a fair hour of picking looks like. A 10 to 40 person warehouse can set workable targets from data it already has.
Travel, backtracking and a shared dock door eat more labor than any missing feature. One day of watching with a clipboard will show you where.
Which spares earn shelf space comes down to what downtime costs and how long the part takes to arrive. Weighing it takes one spreadsheet.
You don't need slotting software to put fast movers where they belong. A sales history export and an afternoon in a spreadsheet gets you most of the way.
Before any recommendations, a good consultant walks your floor and times the real work. What to expect from those first two days on site.
Picking gets the blame for accuracy problems. Trace the variances back and most of them started when the truck was unloaded.
Most selections are decided before the first demo, in how the requirements get written. Plenty of that work you can do yourself.
Some problems get better the week you go live. Others follow you into the new system and cost more there. It pays to know which kind you have before you sign.
The Bin Location field looks like bin management until the day you need two bins for one item. Where it stops, and when it's time to quit working around it.
When the same inventory role gets posted three times in a year, the problem usually isn't hiring. It's a systems problem wearing a turnover costume.
ERP demos are rehearsed. Five requests that force the presenter off script and show you how the system handles your real, messy warehouse.
Most warehouses that ask about a WMS have a barcoding problem. Treating them as one project is the most expensive habit in small-warehouse software.