Warehouse Practices: How Do Yours Measure Up?
This year’s DEIG Chair, Craig Bauer, vice president for global sourcing at Houghton-Mifflin, says that the corollary questions every manager would want such a tool to answer are, “Are we competitive? Are we best-in-class?”
Knowing how you stack up on lines per labor-hour moved out the door [number of title lines picked off of orders] will tell you right off the bat where you stand from a productivity standpoint. But it is only the tip of the iceberg. How much inventory are you holding to make this happen? What is your equipment and plant investment? What automated and manual picking and consolidating procedures and technologies are used? What would be the effect of reconfiguring some aspect of your operation or a change in SKU or channel mix? How much of your resources are devoted to customer service and added-value operations? The program includes a “what-if” tool to provide answers to these questions.
Eugene G. Schwartz is editor at large for ForeWord Reviews, an industry observer and an occasional columnist for Book Business magazine. In an earlier career, he was in the printing business and held production management positions at Random House, Prentice-Hall/Goodyear and CRM Books/Psychology Today. A former PMA (IBPA) board member, he has headed his own publishing consultancy, Consortium House. He is also Co-Founder of Worthy Shorts Inc., a development stage online private press and publication service for professionals as well as an online back office publication service for publishers and associations. He is on the Publishing Business Conference and Expo Advisory Board.