Last weekend 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 workers in our plants and warehouses repeat their tasks hundreds of times every day. For them, a small improvement makes a big difference. Consider these examples.

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 to access locations. The likelihood of a mistake is greatly reduced, and without the stooping and climbing, the pickers will remain productive for the entire 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 employees 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 action is required. In "lean thinking" this extra 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. As it turns out, each is worth $100 a year in revenue. Now, it becomes 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.

As you can see, little things do mean a lot. Too bad I didn't get to talk to the builder of my mother's lake house many years ago.