Getting to the root of your materials handling problem

Solving materials handling problems can be a lot like going to the doctor. You need to listen closely to the symptoms then figure out what's really wrong.

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 11/6/2007

Too often, solving a materials handling problem can be like a doctor treating a patient who has self-diagnosed himself on the Internet.

“You have to get beyond what the DC manager thinks is the problem and observe what’s really going on out on the floor,” says Lou Cerny, vice president at Sedlak. “They may tell us they need more dock doors because they can’t ship enough product, when the real issue is that they need a different way of organizing the product flow into the shipping area.”

And just as a doctor checks your vitals, Cerny also looks for certain signs to assess the health of a facility. 

• Housekeeping: “This may sound simplistic,” says Cerny, “but if a facility looks disorganized, that’s probably an indication of how the place operates.” 
• Utilizing the cube: It’s not uncommon for a manager to think his facility is at full capacity because every pallet location has something in it. “If you look closely, you find that 25% of the locations have just two cartons in them,” says Cerny. “If you take those cartons off a pallet and put them in a deck rack, or consolidate inventory, you can free up storage space.”
• Thinking in 3D: Cerny always look at how the first 8 feet of a facility is used. Have they put up a mezzanine or installed storage above the docks, for instance? “You want to see that they’re thinking in three dimensions and not just storage on the floor.”

That type of diagnosis can lead to real results. “We worked with a company that thought they were out of capacity because they were staging all over, including the aisles,” says Cerny. “The real issue is that they weren’t utilizing the cube of the building.”

The prescription: “We added a mezzanine, which opened up floor space. We were able to put packing underneath the mezzanine, and that improved the flow,” says Cerny. “The customer gained an additional three years in the facility before they had to expand.”