CASE STUDY 5 - Bringing a deshevelled warehouse into the 20th Century.

Case Study 5 – Bringing a disheveled warehouse into the 20TH Century

OK, so it’s the 21st Century, but this workplace had to make a lot of changes and we had to start with the basics first.

Whilst a Warehouse Pick-Packer working for a company that produced and supplied products for defense and police personal, I set about making some changes to make the workplace more efficient, effective and viable.

The warehouse was disheveled. Product was stored in random locations throughout the warehouse. There were no designated locations for product. Much of the stock was palletized; which meant that we had to remove and put stock back on a pallet after locating for an item that may be in the center or bottom of the pallet. Then put the pallet back. Some pallets were simply stored in the middle of isles, which meant that in order for a forklift to access something in the racking, the operator would first have to empty product from the isle.

That’s just the stock. There was also the matter of ‘The Showroom’. Which occupied valuable storage and staging space. It resembled a teenager’s bedroom, with merchandise strewn across bench tops. Dusty showcases and collectables set asunder. The owner also housed in the warehouse an SAS four-wheel drive from the desert campaign in WW2, along with an offroad bike from Desert Storm. Not models or replicas, actual vehicles.

Moreover, the business did not use pick sheets, packing slips or invoices. Instead, picking was done using purchase orders.

Lots of changes had to take place. So, I set about making recommendations.

Of course, there were obstacles. I was a Pick-Packer. My supervisor did push back a bit, but I was quite persistent. There were also people in admin that took offense at an upstart wanting to make changes. Not to mention a business owner who was a hoarder that needed a diadem shift.

Step one. With persistent nagging, I did persuade my supervisor to allow me to reconfigure the warehouse so as to separate product by product type, brand, style, colour, pattern and size into designated locations. Major task but got it done.

Second, I wanted to catalogue locations so we could pick stock by location. The supervisor started to do this with a small area near our dispatch. Not long after, a subculture within the business had that supervisor sacked. It was orchestrated, not reasonable. I had no part in this subversion.

With the supervisor gone, I continued to catalogue locations in what little down time I had, using a proforma I had created at home. It was basically a grid with numeric and alphabetic blocks. I simply filled in each block with the details of what was at that location with a pen. Rember pens? Something we use to use last century.

Finaly, the business owner had the fortitude to commission someone to review the business. I had a few conversations with this contractor and submitted some suggestions for what had to change and solutions.

One recommendation was to reclaim the showroom to use as part of the warehouse. I suggested the vehicle be taken outside and hoisted atop a shipping container that was used for storage at the front of the premises. The business; owner to his credit, did end up selling these vehicles.

Much of the merchandise was removed and made way for other suggestions I had made.

To which, I made some sugestions/options as to how to use this area for staging and dispatch. We did come up with a plan and implemented it.

First model:

Revised model:

As for the rest of the warehouse. I made some other suggestions. One you already know about from Case Study 3. I also suggested installing a couple of mezzanine floors to make better use of vertical real-estate and reduce clutter. As well as having designated areas for different functions.

I also made recommendations to create pick-sheets. Pointing out that the landscape layout made it difficult to correctly select items on the purchase order unless we used a ruler and that there was a lot of information on the purchase order that just cluttered the page. I recommended that the superfluous information be removed and the pick sheet be in a portrait layout to better facilitate pickers.

However, all this activity ruffled the feathers of the subversive subculture. I did not get to complete the location cataloging due to the fact that a new supervisor was required and the subculture that brought about the dismissal of my previous supervisor had arranged for a previous warehouse manager to return. This new manager was a preexisting member of this club. Together they came for me and engineered my dismissal.

Afterall, who was this upstart pick-packer who was managing from the bottom?

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