"You can only manage what you can measure" - Peter Drucker

It is amazing how much performance can improve in an operation once you start measuring it.  TPG has seen consistently that warehouse labor standards can generate 10 to 15% in most distribution environments.  The key is spending the right amount of time to develop a proper productivity standard that people believe in.

Our Labor Standards Match Your Goals for Accuracy and Budget

With this in mind, TPG has developed productivity standards differently for different clients based on what they were trying to achieve. We did quick, basic standards for simple, consistent operations based on similar past clients. We have also used video, MTM, Work-Factor, and MOST to develop more detailed standards in more complex operations. We have gone further to write programs that generated expectations using XYZ coordinate information in sites where clients wanted to institute incentives & pay for performance in the future.  Our goal is to be valuable but flexible.

Productivity Standards Do More than Just Get Associates to Work Faster…

The payback from labor standards is sizeable, but it doesn’t come just from the associates working faster.  A notable consequence of labor standards is that they provide more than just visibility to worker productivity issues; they reveal a lot about how utilized employees are too.  Frequently, with our approach you learn as much about problems in the facility and issues with supervisors as you do employee performance once labor standards are established.  In a performance oriented culture, employees feel compelled to get these issues out on the table once they understand they are hindering them from staying busy and hence making standard.  An often overlooked but significant side benefit of a workforce management program (of which labor standards are just a part) comes from fixing the barriers that prevent great worker performance.

It’s the Method and NOT the Man…

TPG also believes strongly that another source of the productivity lift that comes from labor standards is simply educating the workforce in using the best techniques to do a job.  We are fans of the late Allan H. Mogensen’s idea of “working smarter and not harder”.  We believe so strongly in this concept that all our projects begin with a best methods study, and we have a very active R&D effort in the area of best methods research.

For more information, contact: Steve Mulaik, 770-438-8177, smulaik@theprogressgroup.com.