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Welcome back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty T Hawkins and I thank you for taking the time to check back in with us today. Last week WAOC had the privilege of attending the WERC conference in Grapevine, Tx. We really enjoyed all the learning sessions and visiting with all the vendors. If you’re not familiar with the Warehousing Education Research Council I’d urge you to check them out. Check with your management team, odds are someone in your organization is a member and they’ed be happy to share all the weekly info distributed by their authors and members. Today I thought we’d talk about a few things I took away from the conference, a few thoughts of mine anyway.
There was a lot of technology talk, everything from new handheld units to new innovative speech technology to advanced WMS or warehouse management systems. As you may remember I’ve recently been putting together some training classes and working with young men and women that’s never worked in a warehouse environment before, training them to use the electric rider jacks and to become production-based order selectors.
Anyway, I had a thought. You know, when we drive our vehicles somewhere, let’s say to work for example, our minds really take us there. I bet you don’t remember making every turn, turning on our blinkers, changing lanes, all those little things like that. That’s because our minds are trained to make those kinds of motions. Yeah, we have to be focused on driving, but our minds or memory really handles the simple or repetitive tasks, don’t they? That’s what we train equipment operators too, our minds can do the simple task or thoughts. We’re consciously are thinking of that next slot, checking out our surrounds, watching for others etc and our minds subconsciously will see that our speeds and maneuvering through the warehouse is handled safely. Of course, we’re staying focused and safe though. As professionals, I’ve learned our minds are one of the greatest systems within our industry. Anyway, technology made me think of that. Wow, I wondered off topic there but really, to some degree I feel we train our minds and muscles to let us learn to be more productive and a much safer employee.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about some of the technologies that were discussed, and I bet some of us have a few opinions on what’s out there now, how its improving and what’ll be available to us in a few years!
Back in the mid 1990’s I had the fortune of working with one of the first order selection systems brought to market. Everything was wired. We had a wrist mount unit that had a small cable running to our finger scanning unit. We wore a battery pack and a small label printer around our waist, a cable connected the two. There were small wire clips that held the wiring to our freezer suits so everything didn’t get all tangled up. Cumbersome but effective. Today everything is Bluetooth or NFC with no communication delays and no wiring of any kind. These units are much more productive than the ones I learned with.
Speech recognition came out a few years later and again, and I’ll be nice here and say it was ok. No but really, you had to speak very slowly, it’s learning capabilities was slow. We all speak the language a little differently, especially here in Texas. We had to provide so much input, verifying our locations, repeat our check queue’s over and over, it was just slow. I’ve never been a fan of speech selection but after seeing how far the technologies came over the years, I’ve got to say I’m sold on it now. I visited with several men and women using todays units and talked about all the advantages and efficiencies experienced by the employees and employers today, I’m on the bandwagon again!
Lucas Systems gave a great presentation on the new speech technologies and systems, from both an employee and management prospective, I feel it’s worth a look. I’ll include their URL in today’s show notes in case you have a moment to check out their Work Execution Software. https://www.lucasware.com/
Another great session was with ImageNet Consulting. https://www.imagenetconsulting.com/
I myself am a data guy, the more live data I have access to the more I can get done. Now I know that’s not always true but we learned about all the available systems and how they can be made to talk to each other, share with each other if you will. Imagine having a dashboard or several even throughout your warehouse showing how many cases have been picked and how many are left to be selected. Even having the ability to see each employee’s productivity every 30 minutes and tell what routes have been loaded out as well as what’s loading out right now and by whom. I’m a dashboard believer. We had some great discussions on the advantages of data and of course how you can overload on it too. Check out their link and services, I assure you you’ll find something that’ll set off a lightbulb in the brain!
I thought Optricity had some great thoughts on slotting, warehouse optimization and improvement solutions too. https://optricity.com/ I’ll add that URL too, I think you’ll find there doing some really good things out there.
As a young supervisor it’s easy to get caught up in all the technologies and systems. Especially after attending a really good conference. It’s important that we keep our feet firmly planted in the present too, I mean we have a job to get done on a daily basis, we can’t overreach our company’s goals or our abilities.
I know here at WAOC we’re always talking about self-education, researching things we know little about and learning all the time but I encourage you to take advantage of every opportunity to sit with or be around those with experiences, that’s where the short cuts to knowledge is, I try and learn from others mistakes so I don’t have to make them myself!
That reminds me of an employee a few years ago, he wasn’t one of mine, he worked on a different shift, but he came to me about how his supervisor and/or the transportation supervisor would sometimes come and sit at his table during break. He’d say man, there’s 10 open tables and they’ll come sit down at mine. He kind of worked on his own so he was usually alone in the breakroom. I kept trying to tell him to listen to them and strike up conversations, that’s free education dude. Again, getting noticed by our management teams will never turn out bad for us!
When I go to these distribution conferences, and of course I love all the breakout sessions, but the vendor expo is where I get to talk and visit with everybody. It’s always great to see people in the industry you’ve known for years and meet all the new associates coming up in the ranks. I saw a couple of vendors I worked with 5 and 10 years ago, still loving their products and enjoying what they do. I think I was most impressed with the robotics being displayed. In the coming years I think we’ll see some really innovative and efficient tools and systems to further our productivity gains as associates. Another thing I was impressed with was all the android tablets and handheld units. I won’t bother you with the specifics, but I’ll include a few links in today’s notes. I had the opportunity to handle no less than 10 different units and I wanted every one of them. Today’s WMS or warehouse management systems are awesome and have grown into so much more than I could have imagined 10 years ago. A great conference all the way around.
Well, there’s my week in a nutshell. I enjoyed the WERC Conference and feel like I learned a lot while just visiting and meeting others. I’m not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned today, I just thought you may find their services interesting. I’ve included several links in today’s notes and I’ll add a few from the vendor expo too, there’s so much tech and new product lines out there, I enjoy trying to keep up with it all.
If you attended the conference last week let me know what you thought of it, maybe share with the group what all you learned or what impressed you the most! Send us an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and we’ll compare notes. And don’t forget about our Facebook and Twitter communities, just use that little @whseandops on either and we’ll get a discussion going! While I’m throwing plugs out there remember you can find many of us hanging out at the Warehouse Equipment Operators Community page throughout the week on Facebook too!
Until next week, keep learning and keep safety in the forefront of our minds!