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Welcome back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty and WAOC is back on the road this week! I’m in San Antonio, Tx at the International Foodservice Distributors Association conference. I’m actually here to Introduce The Distribution Training Center. It’s always great to see all the vendors and old colleagues in the industry. There’s some exciting news and innovations in our worlds of distribution coming, I’ll be sharing bits and pieces of what all I learned and saw this week in some future episodes too, there’s just so much to absorb! If you remember we visited with Joe back in April at The Taste of Oak Cliff event and learned a little about The Distribution Training Center, and as one of the Instructors involved with it I was honored to be a part of it’s introduction to the industry this week! I’ll try and grab Joe in the next week or two and put an episode together from the DTC, it’ll be a lot of fun, maybe we can interview a few students over there!
Attending a large conference is really a lot of work, even for the attendees. I remember my first conference as a young Supervisor, talk about being stressed out. I guess it’s a lot like how we can feel with a new job. I mean we’re in a new environment, seeing all kinds of knowledgeable people, a host of new products, being introduced to new efficiencies as well as not exactly tried and true thoughts. As a young member of management, it’s really an honor, or I always chose to believe it worked that way, to be chosen to attend all the corporate events or industry conferences each year. I always looked at the cost of the event, the travel, hotel stays and honestly those attendee registrations don’t come cheap either, and committed myself to see all I could see and learn all I could from every booth and everyone I met! As many of you know, I try and keep a daily journal, really for my own benefits, but I’d write everything down everything I saw at conferences! Most importantly for myself, my own self education but the greater benefit was probably that it gave me the opportunity to share what I learned with my bosses. When you have the opportunity to travel to such and learn or promote your company I strongly urge you to seize the moment. There’s no better way to get noticed by your executive management team than assuring them that monies have been spent wisely and that they will see a return on their investment with you and with sending you to future conferences!
Being a young Supervisor, or new to management is probably the toughest segment of your career. We’ve spoken before how one of our first obstacles is breaking the expectations and relationships with our crews, or clicks, whatever we call them, our fellow employees I guess. We use to be part of the group, then overnight things changed. We now have responsibilities, regulatory, governmental, we have to make sure all the rules, processes and procedures are not just being kind of followed but really being performed to the letter of the law or our companies expectations! A quick story, I knew a forklift driver, he was one of 6 on his shift. For literally years they had no direct supervisor overseeing them, they were a very tenured group, knew what they we’re doing and to be honest very good at their jobs, a very productive team. Anyway, the department was growing, and my friend was promoted to the position of Putaway Supervisor. Since the department would be experiencing this growth, doubling within about 8 months, it was on everyone’s radar now. The warehouse director, who use to only check in with the group about once a week was now involved daily, his expense budgets we’re increasing and of course his responsibilities towards payroll and productivity would be scrutinized as well. And the Safety Manager, someone they rarely heard from before was now, and rightly so, was a little more involved with the group. With new operators being added to the shift, and the crew growing, he needed to be much more involved. Anyway, the old group of 6 for years had been doing both their pre-trips and post trip paper work at the end of their shift, just before punching out for the day. The company’s policy had always been that you’d perform your pre-trip report upon arrival, worked your shift and completed the day doing your post-shift equipment report on your way out the door. My friend had been instructed, on day one mind you, to start having the crew turn them in as per company policy. He didn’t think thus was a big deal, after all everyone knew what the rules really were right? He rolled out the request from the Safety and maintenance department, just as it’d been relayed to him at the regular start up meeting only to find, to the crew it was a big deal. It was quickly pointed out that he’d always turned in his equipment reports at the same time, together, and why was he changing their process. He’d learned lesson number one, many times things are all in the wording, how its presented.
Being a supervisor and a member of management makes you no better or above anyone else. It doe’s and will, in may instances, give us more information though, a heads up or maybe I’m trying to say the reasons for decisions or those policies now may be shared with us in greater detail. And then it’s our responsibility to communicate it forward to our reports. There’s that communication word. I know I bring it up every time I’m talking about advancement, our roles as supervisors and leads, but I have to state again that our ability to effectively communicate, and communicate honestly and fairly will determine our success and how quickly we see that advancement and those opportunities! He still laughs to this day about that meeting and how he wishes he had explained how with the department growing that they needed to share the rules and processes with the new boots. They’d all been use to relying on each other and knew they could trust each other with the equipment but now maintenance had to learn to rely on the new team members so lets all tighten up and help our new operators.
As I mentioned earlier, it was great seeing a lot of my old co-workers in the industry this week, and I was excited to see and meet so many new and young up and comings in our fields. I know I learned a lot and took away enough to keep me busy for months educating myself with the new products and companies entering the industry.
A couple of things I know we’ll be seeing and hearing more about is all the new technologies being introduced. I sat in on a panel discussion with representatives from Forklift Simulator and The Raymond Corporation. The session was on Virtual Reality Training. They spoke about some great software for training a forklift driver, and how realistic it was for the student. They hit on the positions of driving and order selecting too. If you’ve ever done anything with VR I’m sure you’re thinking of the possibilities, right?
Another session focused on how to put together a roadeo and he covered a lot of the Do’s & Don’t’s. I really liked this presenter. I’ve put on several events myself and had the honor of attending and judging many more. Roadeos are a lot of work, and they can lean a little heavily on our expenses, but what a great thing to do for our employees. And really those cost can be controlled. I’ve been to really great roadeos that were put on for just a few hundred bucks. It’s all about the employees, and I’ve always felt it’s important to recognize their efforts and the jobs! Roadeos are great!
I think one of the most thought-provoking sessions I sat in on with on Uber Freight. I believe as a shipper, or broker, especially the mom and pop shop or small trucking organization this is a concept to watch. It appears to really be picking up speed, I’ll be watching it grow and be keeping up with the business model here. I’ll try and learn a bit more about it and maybe we can do an episode on transportation in the near future, I’m pretty excited about the possibilities it’ll offer.
Like I said we introduced the Distribution Training Center there this week, I’m really excited about it and boy, I’ve got a lot of follow up to do with a lot of new friends and people in the business wanting to know more about it. I’m enjoying helping the students get started and their foot in the door in a great new industry and the efficiencies being seen so far are outstanding. We’re hosting a Grand Opening for all the distribution centers local to Dallas this month too, I can’t wait to introduce it here! I’m going to make sure and corner Joe and we’ll put a show together there in the warehouse floor.
Well, I got sidetracked again but back to being a new Sup and having the opportunity to attend a convention or conference. Take advantage of every new learning experience ladies and gentlemen. Yes new is a bit stressful but everyone goes through it. Latch on to someone, a mentor you respect and learn everything from their experiences! And remember a good communicator is really a great listener too! Just about every industry I can think of has conventions throughout the year and if your working for a larger corporation I bet they have several conferences too. Think of them as just stepping stones to our goals. Being that employee we’re always talking about here at WAOC is going to get you that invite. Take all the wisdom shared with you at those events and impress your executive team with your enthusiasm and knowledge you bring back!
About 7 weeks ago we were speaking about our 2018 Goals, we kind of reviewed where we were and talked about our next pay increase or promotion. We felt like 15 weeks was plenty of time to achieve or prepare for our next steps. Let’s see, what do we have left, 8 weeks, 8 weeks until the new year, how’s everyone doing? If we’re focused and acting on our plans I bet those 2018 goals are within our grasp! How’s that planning coming along on our 2019 Goals?, I’m sure we’ll be talking about those in the coming week’s!
I hope you enjoyed todays episode and I’d like to thank you for checking in again. Keep sending your questions and thoughts to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and I’ll keep finding those with answers for us! If you haven’t subscribed to us on iTunes, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast or your favorite Podcatcher please do so, it’s absolutely free and you’ll never miss an episode that way! And of course remember we can be found on both Facebook and Twitter, you can find us using @whseandops! Until next week lets all communicate a Safety topic to a new boot on the floor!