Comments on: Reduce Cost in Warehouse and Increase Service Level: Strategies you Can Employ Today

By: K K GANGADHARA

K K GANGADHARA — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 11:21:32 +0000

Well explanation, thanks for every one

By: Jason Morin

Jason Morin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:59:40 +0000

Very refreshing article. It is sometimes difficult to be both a Lean advocate AND work in warehousing where you are surrounded by thousands of pallets of inventory. The enjoyable part of the job though is helping those in warehousing learn how to apply the principles and tools of Lean to the operation of the warehouse. Warehouse managers usually can’t control the levels and mix of inventory, but they *can* control how to effectively unload, store, pick, and load that inventory efficiently and effectively.

By: Stephen Stanley

Stephen Stanley — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:40:20 +0000

Good post! It emphasizes something I try to fight in the various Lean and Six-Sigma forums, slavish devotion to the tools of the disciplines. A few nights ago a speaker at our ASQ meeting used the metaphor of the Cargo Cults in the South Pacific following World War II: After the war, they built runways, control towers and even effigies of airplanes to try to make the airplanes that had delivered good things come back. The Seven Wastes represent absolutes, ideals that can never be attained in the real world. Inventory is one: Until I have a Star Trek molecular assembler in my home big enough to produce anything I could possibly want, there will be inventory and even in the molecular assembler case, there have to be molecules to assemble from. Slavish devotion to the tools will not generate an effective Lean implementation and the wastes, expressions of an ideal state, are nothing other than tools.

Good post. Thanks!

By: Rob van Stekelenborg

Rob van Stekelenborg — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:09:24 +0000

Pete,

Inventory, weherever it sits, still wastes time, resources and money. That you try to “optimize” only points at obstacles in the way to the ideal and is an example of stepping into the efficiency trap. Instead ask: why are producers so far away from their market? Why are transportation resources expensive? What is it, that makes us feel the need to put in the waste of inventory and a DC? (Think about Rother’s Kata in that respect).

I’m not saying we can be in an ideal world tomorrow, but in the meantime many other possibilities exist to eliminate the warehouse in a supply chain. For instance: use direct deliveries for certain value streams bypassing the DC, use milk runs and EXW conditions instead of DDP and point-to-point transportation. And when you really have to go by a DC, limit its use, e.g., by merge-in-transit and crossdocking.

What’s then left in terms of value stream and processes in the DC can then still be subject to Lean principles. But we should never forget that in the end, it is not about doing efficiently what shouldn’t be done at all.

Best regards,
Rob van Stekelenborg