60 seconds with ... Phil Godden

Phil Godden on rolling out a lean warehousing program.

By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 9/1/2005

We wanted to put more focus on continuous improvement at our six warehouses. Just as important, we wanted continuous improvement to become part of our culture. From there, it was a short step to lean warehousing.

You could say we're writing the book on lean warehousing as we go. Many of us had read "The Toyota Way" about lean manufacturing. But there wasn't anything similar for warehousing. So we used manufacturing as a starting point, and brought in some consultants with automotive experience.

They helped to roll this out to all six warehouses simultaneously. First we focused on continuous process improvement and group problem solving skills. Then we went on to the 5Ss, and had two Kaizen events at each of the DCs. Healthy competition developed between the DCs to be best at lean.

That's when the consultants got stuck, so we're on our own now a year into the project. Our facilities are spotless, everything is in its proper place, and it's much easier to see and under-stand our flow. We're about to go into our first peak season with lean in place, and we should be able to quantify the benefits then. After all, we have spent $800,000 on this so far. We've absorbed about all the change we need right now. But we'll get back in January at continuous improvement, which is much more part of our culture now. Benchmarking against other facilities is one of our next goals.