 Business may be slow now but before you know it you’ll be jammed again. Want to get more done with the folks you have? Things to consider:
- Keep the lifts in good repair
- Batteries getting old?
- Stagger shift starts – replenish forward picking before the first wave
- Reslot often
- Not enough space, then make more – get to 10% empty forwards and 20% empty reserves
- Qualify and prioritize the inbound freight – need the trailer now, or later?
- Qualify the product going into reserve
- Get the inbound current and under control before tackling pick, pack, ship
- Fix any and all inventory inaccuracy root causes
- Have fresh eyes look at the problem – select different supervisors or warehouse workers look at other areas
- Eliminate touches
- Minimize travel
- Right size the forwards, so inbound doesn’t need to go into reserve
- Align the picking method for each product with its order pattern
- Can the WMS round up order quantities to an easily picked unit or measure?
- Engage the troops
- Every DC worker makes thousands of decisions each day; understand and guide discretionary decision-making
- Solve the workforce’s boredom problem
- Most supervisors spend less than 5% of their time on motivating employees, double that and double productivity
- Inbound congestion means waste and extra touches
- Housekeeping
- Address the annoyances that demotivate
- Keep inbound under control and putaway as timely as possible
- Recalculate Safety Stock
- Update leadtimes
- Bust the inbound batch sizes
- Increase inbound visibility, smooth the spikes if you can
- Publish metrics for all to see and encourage friendly competition between zones, departments, facilities
- Create a ‘dog pound’ and move slow movers out of the way
- Study and fight outbound congestion
- Adjust the number of pick zones; fewer the better
- Synchronize order filling across all zones
- Keep current on replenishment
- Never run out of supplies (totes, pallets, carts, tape)
- Adjust the organization chart
- Constantly monitor outbound flow; rebalance pick, pack, and loading
- Reduce the number of job classifications
- Use inbound teams and eliminate staging areas: unload, receive and put away with one touch not two or three
- Brainstorm and then brainstorm some more
- Be careful what you measure
- If you are in a meltdown, get help
- Consider postal pick location address scheme; going down an aisle picking on left and right instead of down one side and coming back the other
 The term Waterspider or water beetle (mizusumashi in Japanese) comes from the behavior of the insect known in the States as a whirligig, an aquatic animal that skitters around on the top of a pond quickly changing direction as it goes. For a lean enterprise the role of material handlers, expediters, and support staff changes. In the Toyota Production System this is the common name for a person assigned to support a production operation, so that others may focus exclusively on value-added work. The waterspider delivers parts to the other associates in the cell or on the line so that they don’t need to stop to replenish their work stations.
Unlike a ‘floater’, a waterspider is assigned specific tasks, such as replenishing raw material inventories (via milk run), common area clean-up, communicate status, maintain visual metrics, etc… Waterspider duties usually don’t include tasks which take them away from the production area, or detract from their specific, assigned duties (the waterspider is not the ‘5S’ person or a ‘fill in’). Think of the waterspider as the ‘race car pit crew’ for the production team, without which it would be impossible to win or even run the race.
Waterspiders quickly become experts in the withdrawal and production kanban system. They can ’see’ more of the up and down stream flow in real time than most others, and because of this often making it possible to identify and eliminate errors. From recent experience the waterspiders often have a better grip on reality than their managers, planners, and engineers.
Non manufacturing examples abound in restaurants, hospitals, insurance claims processing; serving the folks that add the value isn’t just for manufacturing. In product and software development the role of the program manager is sometimes something like that of the waterspider, except bringing knowledge to the various development team members instead of parts.
Here are a few references:
Single piece flow at ConMed Linvatec
Improving Workflow With Water Spiders at University of Michigan Health System
Inventory management in electronics manufacturing: The Move To Lean
Lean in the Oil Fields
Have any examples you’d like to share?
Dave Jones and Pierre Loewe write in Chief Executive Magazine …
Discontinuities are big, foundational shifts which have the potential to fundamentally change the rules of the game. They occur when trends from different areas combine, resulting in game-changing, long-lasting modifications to the external landscape. If you can identify them earlier and exploit them better than your competitors, you will win. If you don’t, you will be left behind.
You need to assess how the current crisis has affected the discontinuities you were anticipating before the recession hit. Say that until recently, you thought that being “green” meant addressing your carbon footprint. But did you know that by the time we emerge from the recession, “green” will likely mean using efficiently multiple scarce resources, such as water? If your stakeholders are asking about your carbon footprint today, then tomorrow they’ll be asking about your water footprint. You need to get ahead of this opportunity – IBM and Toyota already have.
Lesson: Analyze how the recent events have changed the external landscape — impacted the discontinuities you had previously identified, or created new, unexpected ones.
Why do you think Walmart is asking these questions of their 100,000 suppliers? Can you answer these questions by October 1, 2009? How much staff time will it take to gather this data? If you aren’t a Walmart supplier don’t think for a second you are off the hook; when will your key customers start asking similar questions?
Energy and Climate: Reducing Energy Costs and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
1. Have you measured your corporate greenhouse gas emissions?
2. Have you opted to report your greenhouse gas emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)?
3. What is your total annual greenhouse gas emissions reported in the most recent year measured?
4. Have you set publicly available greenhouse gas reduction targets? If yes, what are those targets?
Material Efficiency: Reducing Waste and Enhancing Quality
1. If measured, please report the total amount of solid waste generated from the facilities that produce your product(s) for Walmart for the most recent year measured.
2. Have you set publicly available solid waste reduction targets? If yes, what are those targets?
3. If measured, please report total water use from facilities that produce your product(s) for Walmart for the most recent year measured.
4. Have you set publicly available water use reduction targets? If yes, what are those targets?
Natural Resources: Producing High Quality, Responsibly Sourced Raw Materials
1. Have you established publicly available sustainability purchasing guidelines for your direct suppliers that address issues such as environmental compliance, employment practices and product/ingredient safety?
2. Have you obtained 3rd party certifications for any of the products that you sell to Walmart?
People and Community: Ensuring Responsible and Ethical Production
1. Do you know the location of 100 percent of the facilities that produce your product(s)?
2. Before beginning a business relationship with a manufacturing facility, do you evaluate the quality of, and capacity for, production?
3. Do you have a process for managing social compliance at the manufacturing level?
4. Do you work with your supply base to resolve issues found during social compliance evaluations and also document specific corrections and improvements?
5. Do you invest in community development activities in the markets you source from and/or operate within?
Reference: http://walmartstores.com/FactsNews/NewsRoom/9277.aspx
STEP 6: DETAIL AND DO
Step 6 details and implements the network plan selected in Step 5. If the purpose of the network planning project is simply to conduct and analysis and make a presentation, no actual changes will be planned. When actual changes will be made, the planner first prepares a Gantt chart of the implementation schedule in the Detail and Do worksheet
The Gantt chart serves as a communication tool, outlining the tasks needed to change the network, the person(s) responsible for each task and the scheduled time for the task to be undertaken. Actual implementation is done by professionals in the field. But it is always good for the network planner to be involved in this process to track the changes, build credibility, and confirm the effectiveness of the recommendation.
Post implementation audits capture actual saving from changes to the network. The Detail and Do worksheet provides a section for the planner to measure the variances between the projected and actual savings and to explain them. This is especially important in understanding why the model did or did not result in the expected savings and provides useful lessons for future modeling efforts. In our example, fuel price increases eliminated half the projected savings. Given this impact the planners should probably include fuel price projections in future models of this type.
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