60 seconds with ... Warren Engard

Warren Engard on how to get people to take on more work.

By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 4/1/2006

Picking orders in our distribution center was a lot like digging ditches. I know because I started out as an orderpicker. It's a lot of heavy lifting with all the 50 pound bags of flour we move. Our turnover was huge. If I needed five orderpickers, I had to hire 10 because five wouldn't make it.

We also operated the same as warehouses did in the 1970s. Picking was paper based. And the burden to manage all that paper was on the selectors.

All of that changed when we installed voice-directed picking. People are no longer digging ditches. We invested in our selectors, made their jobs fun for the first time.

Now all of the paperwork is gone. The voice system manages that now. The selectors just listen to the voice commands and respond. Removing that paperwork burden motivated them. Now they can concentrate on the picking.

The first week that we had the voice system, one of the selectors said I could increase his workload any time. And he wasn't alone.

Better yet, that's exactly what happened. People who had once plateaued at 150 cases an hour now pick 210. Others went from 250 cases an hour to more than 300. Our retention rate now is 85%. And our accuracy is 99.9% without checking all picks like we used to do.