Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:29 — 9.2MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Warehouse and operations as a career here and I’m Marty, we appreciate you listening in with us again today. Today is our 200th weekly episode, almost 4 years now. I’ve enjoyed every show, and I hope you’ve liked one or two! Keep asking those questions and listening to our thoughts and opinions and we’ll keep talking and sharing our experiences!
SO today I wanted to talk about training. Why are we so adverse to training? This week I’ve been working with experienced order selectors. I generally look at order selecting as two distinct groups. Productivity & Non-productivity. A lot of people may call what I consider non-productivity a Picker. I think of productivity as required case counts, paid by the case or on activity-based pay programs.
Productivity selectors tend to be a little quieter individual, they hustle, that’s how they make their money. That work is hard, I’m gonna say stressful even. Every movement counts against their time which is their pay. I’ve heard the word arrogant used to describe the top 10% of this group. I’d call them accomplished. They are focused, their working smarter instead of harder. I fault them for doing it their way instead of following the rules, procedures and processes, but more on that in a few minutes.
Anyway, so I was working with some experienced productivity order selectors this week. They were starting a new job within their industry. I explained how their new employer wanted thing done. It was a little different than they were used to doing. One of the points I was having trouble getting across was that although they were using a WMS coupled with a speak to select system this company wanted you to go to a control desk after each pull or batch and pick up your next one. You’d be handed a batch of label’s, scan your batch code from it and then go pull your product. Everyone took issue with that system. Another point was the way pallets were retrieved. They would have a pallet guy lay out the pallets for the selectors to drive under and go with. There were times we’d have to wait a minute, kind of get in line to get our pallets. That wasn’t going over really well. And then I broke the news to them that this particular employer wanted everyone to drive every aisle, the pick path was to be driven even when you did not have a slot to pick from on an aisle. That cross aisles could not be utilized by selectors at all. That’s different than any of us, I don’t guess I should say any of us, I’ll say that’s different than most of us have been taught! As productivity order selectors we’re used to selecting the most efficient and safest way possible and cutting out any non-needed travel time. That’s not how this facility worked. There was a reason of course, there’s always a reason to detour from an excepted practice, but hey, we are getting paid to do it their way.
That’s hard to remember sometimes. We’re professionals, we may be used to being a top selector, and we’ve achieved that by learning how to control our cross aisles and travel time. And then I informed them that their speak to system would not allow to preview our picks or slots. We’d be expected to make our picks in the order that the machine gave them to us. This is huge to us as an order selector. I know, I get it, it’s different. But it is the process at our new job.
Now, the reason this employer is selecting in this manner is that they focus on the efficiencies at the loading and transportation departments. Here, their batches have to show up in the exact order as they are to be loaded. We’ll be dropping off our completed pallets at a wrapping station, they’ll be wrapped, and loaded onto the trailer immediately. It’s actually a pretty slick system, different, but does bring efficiencies along with it.
Let’s come back to this in a second, I want to talk about slotting for a minute. So, during this same class another attendee, a young lady, had a very strong opinion about slotting. She had worked at 2 different productivity places, or I should say he’d mentioned 2 places, and she thought the warehouses were slotted wrong. She stated that no one had ever thought of where an item should go or where it should be placed. Immediately 2 or 3 others join in. I asked if anyone had ever asked a member of management why an item was slotted in a particular location? No answer. So, I asked if anyone had ever suggested to a member of management that an item be changed or moved? One gentleman spoke up and said it wouldn’t have mattered. Taking into account that I was there to train a group of new hires, people that were not presently employed, I let that remark slide. If you know me that was hard for me. Anyway, I explained that our systems, our employers, spend a lot of time and money regarding the slotting of their building. They are slotted based on Cube utilization, slot configurations, product density and movement and velocity. And ergonomics, ease of body motion comes into play. Not necessarily ease of selection. I was pulling once and we had our 50# onion bags, a special onion, we hardly ever pulled at the end of my pick path because that was the temperature it needed to be stored at. It was a pain to restack that pallet so I wouldn’t crush my other product, but I only had to do it like once a week. Yes, I complained, and yes, I did go ask management, that’s how I knew the answer about the temperature zone!
So, and I know we’re all human, and lord knows we have our own opinions and experiences but what is it that, when it comes to a job, we sometimes, or some of us, believe it’s our way or the highway. That our experiences or the way we learned is the best way to perform the task! I get that we’re the best at our jobs. Remember how I said a productivity order selector is sometimes thought of as arrogant! I think a lot of them are class A personalities, my trusty Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_A_and_Type_B_personality_theory search tells us they could be more competitive, ambitious, impatient, time managers and maybe even a little aggressive, maybe that’s why we are so good at what we do right?
But we’ve asked for a job. At our old place of employment we may have been in the top 1% productivity wise, all we need to do is go into this job with an open mind and be the best we can. We’ll be all that again. Work with the systems. Today, it is more important that we work as a team in many instances. That’s going to be hard for a lot of us. But we’re being paid to do it, paid for our talents and willingness to work, to be that productive associate.
I was explaining to people all week that, things are picking back up, slowly, but that from what I’m seeing, things are going to be different for a while. There’s a lot of skilled warehouse and transportation labor out of work right now. When we get that call for an interview or that job offer, well, I think we need to consider it. We may not like it at first, but it’ll be a job, and who knows, we may find that picking within our pick paths or the slotting or the way onions are slotted is workable.
It’s been a great week, a bit challenging, but isent that what we enjoy in Operations! On the serious side for a minute. Things are challenging right now, it’s already getting better, and it’s going to even get better than it was. I think I said that same thing last week! But it is. We need to focus on our task, be that employee, take pride in our positions, and be open to new beginnings. We are professionals, right?
So where are we all at on our plans? I’ve had to do some readjusting, both personally and professionally but for the most part I’m set to achieve my business goals. I’m going to have to buckle down on the personal ones but… well, I just have to buckle down.
Even if we’re out of work right now we don’t have to scrap any goals. It is perfectly fine to just add a couple more to our timeline. That’s the great things about planning, we can turn the page and not miss a beat.
Thanks for all the listens, and for making these last 200 weeks so much fun, if your enjoying each Thursday as much as we are, we’ll have another 200 weeks ahead of us!
Until next week, please be focused, approach each day with an opened mind and be Safe in all we do!