What are you worth?

By Gary Forger, EXECUTIVE EDITOR -- Modern Materials Handling, 7/1/2000

Now there's a tough question. After all, the economy is strong and the labor market tight anywhere you look. Then there are the dot coms. All of them are in serious need of top notch materials handling managers to make their warehouses work.

Mix those factors together and many would expect some pretty good pay checks. As the story - What are you worth? - says, the average salary of a materials handling professional is $72,000. Is that high or low? Well, a quick survey shows it is one of the highest among all supply chain professionals.

One reason might be your resume. Our report says that 20 years of industrial experience is common. Furthermore, you have been at your current employer 10 years or more. So you are not only quite knowledgeable about your profession and industry, but you know the inner workings of your company. Furthermore, 82% of you have taken on additional duties lately.

However, you've got much more than those credentials going for you. You really are well positioned for future pay check gains.

I recently came across a quote from GE's Jack Welch. "If the rate of change outside your company is faster than the rate of change inside your company, then it is the beginning of the end."

Now, who is going to ensure that your company stays on the right side of that rate of change line when it comes to the supply chain? You and your peers, of course.

You are the people who must manage and control what happens within the four walls of the warehouse, distribution center, and manufacturing facility. You are also the people building new relationships as the supply chain becomes supercharged and expectations rise.

In these areas, you are the leaders when it comes to your company's transition from what it has been to what it must become.

This transition takes much more than just delivering the right materials to the right place at the right time. The three rights are still essential, but are no longer the entire game or constrained by the four walls of your facility.

You have to know how to partner equally well with your customers and suppliers as with fellow employees across your enterprise. You have to know how to build systems that substitute information for inventory. And you have to know how to convert old paradigms into new competitive weapons.

Nobody knows this better than the Web moguls. Just ask them what separates their dot coms from profitability. They know it's a matter of maximizing supply chain and warehouse efficiencies so everything runs at e-speed-which, by the way, we're all going to be running at whether we do e-commerce or not. Making that happen at your company will be the basis for what happens to your future pay checks.