Little things mean a lot

Last week-end I stood in the tiny shower at my Mother’s lake house. As I banged my elbows on the walls, I thought about how little additional space it would have taken to make something that you have to do every day a pleasant activity, instead of a struggle.

It made me start to think about other places where a small change in a facility would make a big difference in comfort, speed, cost and quality. I take a shower once a day, but employes in our plants and warehouses repeat their tasks hundreds of times every day. For them, a small improvement makes a big difference.

Slotting popular products in the Golden Zone is a generally accepted principle. But, how much difference does it really make? Just ask the picker who has to kneel on the floor or find a ladder to reach the top shelf. Every pick that we can move to the golden zone can be made twice as fast as those difficult locations. The likelihood of a mistake is greatly reduced, and without the stooping and climbing, the pickers will remain productive for the whole day. Take the time to check product velocity regularly and make the necessary slotting changes.

How carefully do we plan the heights of the containers that employes reach into to retrieve or place products? Are we creating back injury exposure with every pick and place? Could a lift table, a turntable or even a slight angle on the container make the job both safer and faster? Planned into the process at the beginning, it’s a small investment to make a hundred thousand reaches a little easier.

Serial zone picking systems frequently require pickers to check each order as it passes to see if there is a pick in their zone. If not, they can pass it on. But, this step usually requires that the picker reach into the box, or tote, find the paperwork and review the pick list to see if he needs to take action. In “lean thinking” this activity is all waste. A smart conveyor system could route orders to only those pickers where a pick is needed. However, for small companies that conveyor sophistication may be too costly. In a warehouse recently, we found that we could make the identification process much faster by simply printing on the shipping label (in large letters) the zones that need picks. Operators could see at a glance which cartons needed their attention, and which did not.

We frequently talk about the value of improving storage density. I was made even more conscious of it when I was working recently with a Third Party Logistics provider. The warehouse manager was insisting that he needed extra wide aisles so that the lift truck drivers could operate more easily. Because, in the 3PL world, each pallet space represents a revenue opportunity, I asked what an additional pallet space was worth. He was quite surprised when he realized that just one more pallet space in the warehouse represented $100. a year in revenue. Now, it became a little more important to make the aisles just wide enough.

Of course there are trade-offs. We can squeeze more pallets into the warehouse if we keep the lift-off space above the pallets at a minimum. But, if we are picking cases from the pallets at the floor level, then a few inches above the pallet leaves little room for the picker to reach for the cases on the back of the pallet. Where we have products with high picking activity, it is much better for the operator if we leave enough space to prevent him from knocking his brains out on the beam above.

All this stuff about space brings me back to one of my pet peeves. Why are the toilet stalls at the airport the same size as those in a standard office? Did they forget that people in airports are dragging a significant amount of luggage with them? Who wrote the specs? Who is accountable?

Little things mean a lot. Don’t be like the airport architect!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James M. Apple, Jr. is a Director in The Progress Group. Prior to co-founding The Progress Group in 1991, he was a Partner with Coopers & Lybrand's SysteCon division. During 1992-1995 he served as a Senior Systems Advisor with Vanderlande Industries, a major conveyor and systems provider in Europe.

Jim is an internationally recognized thought leader in the area of facility design and integrated distribution systems. His contributions to the improvement of distribution practices have been recognized by his receipt of the prestigious Reed-Apple Award, which is given for lifetime contributions to the advancement of the material handling profession. Jim has also received the Institute of Industrial Engineers' Facilities Planning and Design Award. He has written numerous articles and handbook chapters on warehousing and logistics operations and is a popular speaker on logistics seminar and conference programs.

Prior to SysteCon, Jim worked as an Industrial Engineer with IBM, was Supervisor of Facilities Planning for the Oldsmobile Division of General Motors and was Executive Vice President for an automotive aftermarket parts supplier. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.