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Warehouse and Operations as a Career here and I’m Marty, everyone having a fantastic week, I hope? I had a good Q & A show planned for today, I’m getting so far behind answering some questions, and I’ve researched quite a few answers forthem too!
Anyway, just before I sat down to record, I received a phone call about a gentleman that had been counseled about a disturbance he’d caused out on the floor earlier. I made a few phone calls to get the scoop. Not really an investigation but I knew the HR person and wanted to be ready with input if asked about it!
I feel like all this could have been avoided, well, it should have been avoided, and the gentleman was both wrong and right at the same time! I’ll need to define that, but the bottom line is everything about this was wrong. Are you confused yet!
Let me clarify a couple of things. So, the employee was upset about an item being moved or re-slotted in the warehouse by the first shift today. I’m not sure what the product was, but it was, what they called medium cube, so we’ll say a case of it was like 5 cube. Evidently, it weighed a bit or was a little heavy, and the warehouseman took issue with where it was moved. Too the end of a pick path I presume, or at least he felt like it was going to be a crush hazard or stacking hazard. Anyway he started yelling, cursing, and well, pretty much making a scene about how nobody knew how to slot and that he wanted to know who had decided to move it and that he wanted to speak with the individual that came up with that idea. I’m hearing his supervisor tried to deescalate the situation, but the employee was just done listening to anyone. The supervisor had no recourse but to suspend him and send him home for the rest of the shift.
OK, part one of today’s episode we’ll be talking about What would it take to justify losing our calm and cool, professional workplace disposition? You may have detected a little sarcasm there but seriously!
If our job or task is safe, and if our work environment is clean and sanitary, and we have the occasional opportunity to see a supervisor or manager, even any member of the management team sometime during our shift to voice a concern or even an opinion over something, how, or I guess why do associates lose it sometimes? Now I know we get frustrated on the floor. And yes, we have to work harder than would be required if a mistake has been made but there are ways to get it corrected. And this type of mistake would have been corrected shortly, without a doubt!
I want to go back to that we’re being paid sentence. We have a defined task or set of responsibilities, pretty much anyway. I know anything can be added at any given time but over all we’re paid to perform our job. If someone else hasn’t done theirs, is it really any of our business? This is business, not high school, there’s nothing wrong with pointing out the situation. There may or may not be justification to point out who did it wrong. The important thing is to get it rectified, made safe again or made efficient again right? Think back, have you ever seen things end well for, what’ll we call it, have you ever seen things end well for the disruptor?
We all get frustrated from time to time. But if the situation or opportunity doesn’t fall under our responsibility, don’t worry about it. Again, its business, or job, and we’re being paid. If it’s a safe situation, and not our responsibility, go on about our business. It will be corrected. Let’s not lose time or our position over such.
So, to sum it up. The gentleman was wrong. And the item was in the wrong place. Inventory control corrected it and come to find out had already been made aware of it and it would have been moved the next shift anyway!
So, I’m sure we’ve all thought, if only to ourselves before, that why in the world is this item slotted here?
The slotting of the warehouse is actually a very throughout and calculated endeavor. Companies pay 100’s of thousands of dollars to companies that lay out our warehouses. And if we’re talking new construction, well, our available cube is planned out to the last inch. We’ll get to that in a minute. So, a few areas slotting will touch can be all our storage areas. Our Putaway functions, Order Selecting of course, Replenishments and The Inventory Control department.
Have you ever used or does your facility use a device like a cubitron or cubiscan, there’s several different brands. Some with more bells and whistles, some with just bare bones functionality. Their cool though and, as much as I hated having to measure every new item that came into the warehouse, they do make our lives easier when it comes to slotting a warehouse.
Vendors may call them. That means they give us the dimensions of our case. Length, width, and height so we know the cube of the case.
With the cube measurement we now know how many can fit on a pallet, in a slot, on a selection batch, and on a truck for delivery. So, as you can tell the measurement is very important to the warehouse.
But what determines how many cases goes on a pallet or what size, or cube, slot does the item go to you may ask! And that’s a very good question. So, let’s talk about the price of real-estate for a minute.
The cost of a warehouse is immense. We have to utilize every square foot. Our offices need to be laid out efficiently and our warehouses have to be set up for productivity of course. But then we have to make sure every possible inch of storage space is used as well. If we set our slot sizes based on how product come into our facility from the vendor, we may be able to avoid breaking down the inbound pallets. But if that pallet sits in a high cube slot for 2 months, taking up warehouse cube or space, well, maybe it’d of been better to break it down and put 1 smaller pallet in the pick location with 3 smaller pallets up in the reserves and out of the way?
So, we know warehouse space is expensive.
So, let’s talk about Cube utilization, anyone heard that term before?
Basically, it means 4 things to me:
- Size/Cube of an Item or its case
- Slot configuration – 10 cube, 32 cube, 48 cube 64 cube etc.
- Available Cube – or how much cube is in an area. We just spoke about some different pallet or rack configurations. Here we could be talking about things like bins or totes, or maybe carton flow racking or slots or maybe even a multi-level small wood area for the smaller 32X36 or 30×32 inch pallets
- Velocity or Movement of an Item – or how often does a case of this ship or how often do we get an order for this item.
There are a lot of articles on-line about cube utilization, there actually pretty interesting to read. Check them out, bring something you read to your supervisor. I assure you he or she is drilled by their boss or the merchandising department about the available cube in their warehouse!
And as we all know our facility may actually be changing out rack or slot configurations every quarter or so. As business changes so does our storage requirements.
In our training facility for example we have several different types of bays:
- 96” Bay –
- 144” Bay
- 40” x 48”
- 32” x 36”
- Bin Slots
- Carton Flow Racking
- Pallet Flow Racking
- Mezzanine
- Carousel
All those can create different slotting opportunities for all kinds of storage.
And then we have several different kinds of labeling systems or configurations too. And I mean several, I’ve probably seen a couple of hundred types over the years.
One thing I mention to new boots is that in today’s worlds a slot location tag is really just for our human minds. They give us a focus point and describes where our selection device is trying to direct us!
Your very basic type can be as simple as DA1001, meaning something like section or area D, aisle A the first 1 meaning the first level and the slot would be 001. The second level would read DA2001, the 2 meaning the second level.
Another typical configuration is called alpha bay.
DA-01-01 meaning area D, aisle A, 01 tells us it’s the first bay and then slot 01. A bay could hold one, two, three or even 4 pallets depending on the distance between the uprights. DA – 02-01 would be the area D, A aisle, the second bay of the aisle and slot 01 there.
And its important to note, usually anyway, our odd numbered slots will be on the left side and the even numbered slots will be on the right side.
And of course, we all know not to go down an aisle, backwards right? Warehouse movement paths, especially our selection paths will snake through the warehouse. Right turn into an aisle and then left turn from an aisle usually.
I kind of jumped ship there talking about rack labeling, but, it’s a part of the conversation, right?
So where was I, ok, is getting upset over a relatively complicated and usually computer driven determined slot, going to do us any good?
I mentioned a earlier. Our fancier models will be able to link to our procurement systems too. meaning it’ll know what our buying multiples are, how often a case sells etc. It’ll recommend a pallet configuration, a proper ti and hi along with a slot or cube location to optimize our available cube. Now these systems can be smart too. Let’s say every time we select a blue cup item number 3232 we also always have an order for a case of blue plates 3636. It very well could slot those two items next to each other, so we have no wasted drive time. What are we always talking about here at WAOC, working smarter and not harder!
Well I could go on and on about slotting and us acting right on the docks, but I think we’ve all got it now!
I wanted to talk about our 4th quarter goals today, we’ll try and get to that next week.
Until then please be safe, stay calm, it’s just life, enjoy it, be a professional and keep those around us safe as well!