IntelliTips
Is your DC ready for the Christmas rush?
Follow our IntelliTips for success!
- Appoint a flow coordinator who has overall responsibility to keep material flowing throughout the entire network. His/Her view should be from 1 hour to 1 week. They should have a stand up meeting with floor supervisors every day for a 2 way briefing on material flow conditions and expectations. Availability of good reports and forecasts is the key to success of this position.
- Arrange for additional consumable stock to be delivered during peak Holiday periods; preferably more frequent deliveries.
- Clean house. Move inventory that will not move during the Holiday season into remote storage (rented space, trailers, storage containers).
- Create a coach's "playbook" for critical areas that should a failure occur or problem situation arise the preferred resolution to these opportunities is already documented. Utilize this "playbook" and a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd preferred course of action strategy to resolve the situation timely to keep product moving until the opportunity is resolved.
- Double up on preventive maintenance, especially inspections, just prior to the Holiday season.
- Ensure all required materials within each area are readily available prior to the associates arriving in the desired work areas. Pallets, Cartons, Scanners, pens, pencils, labels, tape, etc.
- Hire and train trainers for temporary staff prior to the Holiday crunch. Also prepare and document training programs including review of in house safety expectations and rules.
- Identify the information flow pinch points or bottle necks and develop work around.
- Identify the pinch points or bottle necks to physical product movement and double team these location before they cause a backlog.
- Increase vigilance of vendor compliance by conducting refresher courses prior to the crunch time.
- Keep all start up meetings to a maximum of 5 minutes. Start the meeting on time and end on time to maximize associate "on task" time. Review expectations for the day, projected daily volume, previous day's performance, top performer, etc.
- Keep carton recirculation to less than 10%. Any carton that is not sorted on the 1st pass will typically require recirculation for a 2nd pass. Cartons that require recirculation consume available space that could have been used for 1st pass cartons and could impact the operation in a significant negative way. (ie. Longer batch times to close trailers due to waiting on cases.)
- Make arrangements for adequate parking and comfort facilities for extra employees.
- Perform preventive maintenance daily to ensure better system up time. If needed, contact Intelligrated Customer Service for recommend preventive maintenance schedules.
- Poll the staff to see how overtime can be scheduled in the manner that is least impact full.
- Practice response to severe outages such as power, IT communications, and disruptive weather conditions.
- Prepare a facility map and critical contact information for temporary employees.
- Promote and train a few first line supervisors from current staff in anticipation of the need to have leaders for small teams of temporary employees.
- Provide cups and water dispensers near each functional area. Minimizing this walk distance will ensure the associates' time "on task" is maximized as well as provide a quick and convenient location for water when needed.
- Review all products slotted in prime pick locations to ensure all items have a minimum of 3 days on hand. Profile product to balance work areas and place all high velocity items in the "sweet spot or golden zone" typically elevated between the picking associates' hip and shoulder.
- Survey rack opening to see if storage density would be improved by creating half height openings by adding pallet support beams.
- Large Cube High Velocity items can be placed on "jump" trailers to reduce space requirements within the facility. Stage these "jump" trailers near the shipping area for timely fulfillment of orders.
- Verify the availability of totes and pallets to handle the extra material flow volume.
- Write short work instructions and post them in each work area. Include visual work aids of required steps within specific tasks to aid associates with common questions that arise to minimize associate "off task" time.
