Avoid 3 common warehouse mistakes
Three common mistakes allow bad things to happen to good facilities. Here's a look at why some of the best-laid DC plans go awry.
By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 10/14/2008
Stuff happens. It’s true when your car breaks down on the way to an important meeting, and when your teen deletes your PowerPoint presentation the night before a sales call. And it even happens in warehouses and DCs, where even the best-laid plans for a new system sometimes come up short.
Why does bad stuff sometimes happen to good facilities? Often it starts with the plan, says Karen Manning, manager for Sedlak Management .
“Things go wrong because you haven’t adequately identified your goals up front or you haven’t laid the groundwork for accomplishing your goals,” says Manning. “You may still move a project forward eventually, but it won’t be at an efficient pace and you’ll spend a lot of time doing rework because you didn’t do things in the right order.”
Manning identified three other common mistakes that lead DC projects astray.
Mistake #1) Expect the unexpected
There’s an old saying that a battle plan is good up to the point where you engage the enemy. The same can be said for implementing a new warehouse system or process. “Every project will have something unexpected go wrong,” says Manning. “When that happens, you need to modify or adjust the plan you made six months ago to keep pace with the reality of where you are today.”
Mistake #2) Document changes
The best systems and projects will evolve as you begin to layout and test a system. Either the system performs differently than was anticipated or, more commonly, the profile of orders and products being handled changes between designing and implementing a system. “As you start working with a system, you may have to modify it to meet new requirements,” says Manning. “When that happens, it’s important that everyone get on board and sign off on the changes. Otherwise, people make their assumptions about how things should work, which can lead to problems.”
Mistake #3) There’s no “I” in team
A new warehouse process or system is a team effort. To get the most effective system up and running, it’s important to not only identify a project team up front, but to also clearly identify every team member’s role and responsibilities. “Without that, you end up with mayhem because you get an individual with their own agenda,” says Manning. “A new system is a team effort and not an individual effort.”
Three common warehouse mistakes
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