Warehouse Operations Assessment

Client: Art and School Supplies Distributor

Background

Experiencing rapid growth rate and pressure on its operations when meeting peak period demand, our client commissioned GRA to perform an operational review of its warehouse.

Challenges

The client operates a seasonal business that has an extreme peak period of operations. This places extraordinary demand on its purchasing and warehousing operations for 3 months of the year. They were concerned that, with the planned growth in their business, their new warehouse and their team may not have been able to meet the demands. They asked us to:

• Identify and validate the focus areas for performance improvement in the warehouse operations
• Provide a brief report on their opportunities for improvement in the warehouse and
• Provide an independent assessment of the logistics team’s competencies with a view to identifying education & training requirements.

Approach

An assessment of the warehousing operation was conducted, including the following activities:

• Interviews of the key personnel involved in the warehousing operation
• The utilisation of the assets at the client’s warehouse
• The physical receiving, putaway and picking processes
• The procedures outlining those processes
• The inventory control processes and activities
• The number of people involved
• Their current competencies and capabilities and
• The risks in their warehousing operations.

Outcome

Identified 8 point action plan with “quick win” improvement opportunities, focussing on areas including introduction of rough cut capacity plans for warehouse space requirement and labour, container unloading, the more effective use of contract labour, validation of product picking locations, improvement of the inspection & despatch layout, developing a new product introduction and more effective product QA processes. Action plan also identified inventory management as an opportunity to take the next step beyond the “rough cut planning” processes and further improve asset utilisation.