It's that time of the year again when companies are finalizing their plans for summer interns. And given top management's reluctance to add people these days, these positions have taken on new importance as a relief valve for multi-tasking full timers.

Which brings me to a story told the other day on a Webcast of ours by Tom Ryan of The Aberdeen Group, a technology trends research group. He talked about a company that hired a summer engineer every year. And each time, that intern spent the summer doing exactly what the previous year's intern had done—come up with ideas on how to improve productivity in the warehouse. Needless to say, that list included a lot of metrics, and everyone in the company was well aware of what was on the list.

At some point, someone asked the warehouse manager why every summer engineer did the same thing. Wasn't this kind of a waste to have the same outcome year after year? Worse yet, nothing the summer engineer recommended was ever formally implemented.

To which the warehouse manager replied something to the effect, "you don't know the half of it." You see, every year that there was a summer engineer, productivity did increase. And it usually rose by about 10%. Then it stayed there for 3–4 months after the summer engineer left. As the warehouse manager pointed out, everyone knew what they were doing was on a list, and so they picked up their game a bit. And all he had to do to get that uptick was to keep bringing in a summer engineer.

Pretty ingenious when you think about it. Not only were the productivity gains percolating up, they were the result of actions by a summer intern who knew less about the business than anyone else in that warehouse.

You'll find some other ingenious ideas if you visit mmh.com and click on the icon for the Webcast called "The Profitable Warehouse." That's where this anecdote came from. Ryan and Rod Winger of software supplier Epicor offer some great thoughts on how to shift your warehouse from being a cost center to a profit center. And as you already suspect, it has a lot to do with metrics.

And while we're on the topic of Webcasts, you'll want to check out four others on our site. One is about the real-time warehouse, another about successful project management and system integration, and two about radio frequency identification (RFID). All of them are targeted to help you improve your productivity whether that summer engineer shows up this June or not.