Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:27 — 10.8MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Hello all, Marty here with Warehouse and Operations as a Career. We’ve all gone through another great week! I’m sure we’ve dealt with or fought and won, or I hope we won, those negative human nature urges that creep up in us, and struggled through the long hours, productivity needs and maybe those error reports we dread each shift. There all normal in our industry, gonna happen every week. We have a couple of topics I want to get too today but I wanted to talk about, a word that managers are cautioned against ever using, or at least communicating out loud. When I became a lead, my V.P. told me never to mention the word Attitude when I was coaching or counseling a co-worker. We are all individuals, and I think we have the right to think and believe what we want so it made sense to me and I don’t believe I’ve ever questioned another person’s attitude in any form or fashion. Through the years I have questioned mine though. And I try to question it or work on it daily. This week I caught myself, on more than a few occasions, almost letting that human nature curse alter my thinking process.
I am an avid believer that we will have the kind of day we tell ourselves we’re going too. I’m an early riser, always have been. Whither I’m working days or nights I’m up at least 3 or 4 hours before my shift starts. Even on the weekend, which is a curse, I’m up and ready for the day just like it’s a workday. The first thing I do every morning is thank the higher power for waking up. I’m a bit mature, getting older some would say, the knees and joints creak a little in the mornings and I need some time warming up all the organs, muscles and mind. Another words I start out each day with a positive thought, maybe a great memory or a cup of coffee out on the patio on a nice day. Even looking out the window can slow down the mind and make us smile just a bit. Smiling, even if it’s just us can make a positive thought appear within us. Imagine how much we’re helping others sometimes with a happy attitude. That kind of stuff id contagious, infectious even. It’s like a yawn, everyone that sees it is going to experience it. And I’ve found that a good, positive, attitude is not only good for our souls but is great for our careers too. When presented with a problem, being the one that focuses more on a solution, the one that doesn’t join into the mob mentality, the human nature curse, being that person that is not going to allow one issue, an issue that will actually not be remembered this time next year, in any form or fashion, something that is not going to change the course of history in any way, to bother them. That ladies and gentlemen is a confident person. A leader. A thinker. I believe it’s a person that has both feet planted firmly on the ground, has a plan and is going to accomplish their goals. A glass is always half full kind of person. I strive to be that person. I’ve found that great things happen when I’m presenting a positive attitude. Others seem to have a positive attitude and Great things happen to me when I like my attitude. Well there, Mr. Dacus, I’ve used the word attitude 7 times in 3 minutes and didn’t offend anyone. We should never hold an attitude against anyone, of course not, but maybe we can make their workday a little better with ours.
Well, there’s our opinion for today so let’s talk about something to do with operations. Where’s my bullet points or talking sheet for today.
I walked a production facility earlier this week with a new manager, he’s been in the business for, oh, about a month, and we got to talking with a production supervisor about one of the products they made there. A couple of days later the young manager I was with saw an advertisement for that product, thought it’d be neat to have one, after all he’d just seen them making it, so he ordered it on-line. He was told it’d arrive in 7 to 14 days. Pretty normal, but it struck him as odd. He knew they were manufactured in his hometown and was shipping only like 30 miles to his house. Welcome to the new world of 3rd party shipping! Being in the business, when I’m ordering something from an ad on Social Media or sometimes even Amazon, I always find the dot com address from the company and go straight to their website. Take the example with the Manager earlier. The product is made in Dallas, Tx. Their Corp headquarters is in California. The ad on social media stated in stock and ships from Dallas. So naturally he assumed he’d have it in about 3 days. When he placed his order with the 3rd party, they then placed an order for the product under their name and used his shipping address. Now the Manfacturing company fills their own orders as well and I’d imagine that those orders are processed a bit quicker. They have an internal process, probably some kind of automated system, you place an order, it’s entered, selected and shipped, done! A third-party vendor may have to send payment, payment must be confirmed an order created where it’ll be sent to the warehouse, pulled, fulfilled, packed and shipped under another name and branding. A different process. Hense additional days. And maybe an additional cost also.
Another type of 3rd party distribution is where a manufacturer will contract with an offsite distributor that can warehouse all their products and take care of the distribution end, kind of turnkey for them. These are pretty cool because you can purchase a plan for just what you want them to do. They can pick up your finished product, provide storage, maintain your website, take care of all your shipping needs directly or facilitate any 3rd or 4th party partners you may have. They can even handle your returns and repackaging! The great thing about these companies is you can pick what services you’d like them to do and what you want to pay for. 3rd & 4th party distributors are a win win in my book. And for us as employees they can be a win as well. In many instances, since they are working with many different brands and products and with varied services being performed, I’ve seen a facility be able to maintain several different shifts, maybe part-time schedules or flex workday options even. These can make great 2nd job or school schedule options for us.
I’ve found 3rd party or redistribution facilities a good training option too. They typically won’t be based on a pure productivity model since as an employee we may be performing several different tasks. Anything from receiving to shipping, order selecting to putaway to sanitation may be assigned to us so we could have the opportunity to get some great equipment experience while working with them.
We’ll need to recognize that with some facilities the work could be seasonal or dependent on imported product coming in so our work schedules could be interrupted from time to time and I’d always research what kind of growth potential we’ll have. I’d always want to ensure myself that I could grow within the company and they tried to promote talent from within whenever possible.
Another thing that came up during our walk-thru was LTL trailers. This facility had a few parcel service trailers staged at the doors and he heard them term. Less than Trailer Load is really a little different than that though. LTL carriers will come by and pick up your smaller orders, too big to really ship by a true parcel service, you know like something over 150 pounds, sometimes you could even have like 3 or 4 pallets or 2 or 3,000 pounds that needed to ship. They’ll pick it up and carry it to their transfer dock and send it out for distribution routes. Another type of transportation services that deals in smaller quantities or weights are hot shot services. Sometimes called on-demand services, they’ll come by, pick up a load and take it immediately to its final designation for you.
Back to our example from above. It was a small package, something that just needed to be selected and packed. It’d have been a parcel package, probably with a 3 to 5-day ground postage. Your parcel services can provide overnight, next day, 1 or two day services as well.
All these industries are based on customer service. The last couple of weeks we’ve learned how just about every job in the world can relate to customer service in one way or another right. Us as unloaders provide good service to our customer, the pallet runner and receiver and as a fork driver we service our order selectors and merchandisers. If we’re in the sanitation departments, we make sure everyone has a clean workstation. Every job, every industry and every field have a customer service component to it.
So, we’re back to where we started today, as customer service agents we need a positive attitude, we must enjoy what we do, I’ll even throw in that we should have a passion for our tasks and positions. If you’ve ever called your cellular provider or a cable or internet provider and was lucky enough to get an agent with a upbeat and positive, can do attitude weren’t you much happier with them verse the agent that seemed like it was a chore to listen to you, like they hated their job?
Have you ever seen a celebrity or a successful personality on a talk show that wasn’t bubbling with enthusiasm about whatever they were talking about? Oh, and then we have the salesman or saleswomen, you’ll never see a salesperson presenting a poor attitude.
Success, in any industry and a good life is about us being happy and seeing the good. What’s not good it’s up to us to make good, and do it with a positive attitude!
Well, yes, I strayed and stayed off topic today but hey, I’m happy I did!
Until next week, let’s all practice a week of smiles, a week of positivity, and meet every challenge with a solution & be safe doing it!