Tom Andel

MH vendors learning to be labor enablers
September 12, 2008

When members of the Material Handling Industry of America convene for their Spring and Fall meetings, they usually talk about technology developments. This year’s fall meeting was different. The biggest thing on their minds was you, their customers. These product and system suppliers realize that they’re in the same economic boat as you, and the only way for them to survive is to help their customers survive. That means preparing for the future.

Several guest speakers at the MHIA fall meeting hit on a common theme: making best use of the labor pool that will be interfacing with their materials handling technology. David Lockman, senior manager of engineering at L.L. Bean, hit these technology providers with a piece of information they probably didn’t like hearing: automation is often Bean’s bottleneck.

Bean has three DCs in Maine: two in Freeport and one in Portland. These account for two million sq ft of space. The technology used includes  slider bed, belt, powered roller, and low pressure accumulation conveyors; pop-up wheel and tilt tray sortation; and put to light systems for assembling customer orders. There’s also automated packaging, case cutting, and labeling, not to mention warehouse management and warehouse control systems. 

“The weakness of automation is it has a particular application that it does,” he said. “It can’t multitask, you can’t ask it to do two or three things simultaneously. A tilt tray sorter sorts. A conveyor moves things around. The limitation of automation is that it’s static in nature and doesn’t have a wide range of flexibility.”

Because Bean has the luxury of being a privately held company, and doesn’t answer to stockholders, it can invest more in its labor to add an extra layer of flexibility to its operations. If making them safer or more comfortable is more costly, so be it.

For example, in 1996, during the second phase of construction of its newest DC, Bean decided to add a cafeteria. That was expensive.

“One of the finance folks asked what the payback was and the CFO said there is none,” Lockman explained. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

Bean also does automated case cutting in its DCs, which Lockman describes as a prototype system that tended to be “ugly.” They had a hard time finding a supplier that could provide a solution to cut cases exactly the way they wanted. Finally one offered to meet Bean’s spec. Bean didn’t calculate an ROI, and it got about half of what it anticipated from this provider. Lockman still considers that a win.

“It was the right thing to do because we weren’t injuring our employees,” he said.

In another session, Kevin Gue, a professor at Auburn University, outlined his vision of worker-centric warehouses. This kind of facility is one that balances context factors such as motivation and career development with design factors such as safety, ergonomics, aesthetics, even cultural accommodations.

“In time, standards of excellence should appear, and we could use these to evaluate or even certify distribution centers as ‘workplaces of excellence,’” he said.

Sound touchy feely? Not if you consider the nature of the new workforce. Get ready for Generation Y (born between 1983-2000). These people represent 20% of the U.S. population—three times larger than Gen X (born between 1966 and 1982).  Dan Boos, president of Gorillas & Gazelles LLC, a talent recruiting firm, says this generation of workers will be racially and ethnically diverse, technically savvy, independent-minded, knowledge mongers, and picky about their workplace. They’ll also be smart.

Their manner may appear insubordinate, but they could also be driving you to a better solution, Boos suggested. 

The challenge for the materials handling industry and you, their customers, will be to foster a work environment where ideas are encouraged and where technology is a labor enabler.

Are you finding it hard to find and keep good workers in the warehouse, DC or plant? What are you doing to fix the situation? Please share your strategies, either by blogging or e-mail me directly at tom.andel@reedbusiness.com.

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Posted by Tom Andel on September 12, 2008 | Comments (0)