Category Archives: Logistics

The management of the flow of goods, information and other resources, including energy and people, between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet the requirements of consumers. Logistics involves the integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, material-handling, and packaging, and occasionally security. Logistics is a channel of the supply chain.

Storage space too small?

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Are you a small operator and running out of room in your store/warehouse?  You are also more than likely, at that stage where moving to a larger facility is not quite viable, but you are struggling with what you have, yes?

I found a good alternative to hiring expensive ‘specialists’ or attempting to do it solo is to get the help of racking and goods handling vendors.  It is in their own interest to review your situation and present a viable plan.  Obviously they will have a commercial interest which should not be discounted. Your goal is to either obtain more space within your facility or making your goods handling more effective, preferably both, at the best cost.

The method I use is to solicit the help from 2-3 racking vendors and 2-3 handling equipment vendors. Usually they will come back after 4-7 days with a proposal and costs.  The better racking companies will also provide proposed floor plans.  This is when the benefits become apparent.  Review their proposals and include a walk around the facility with them, asking questions and putting forward your own ideas – it is your business so you will have a good idea of what you can and can’t do.

So after reviewing their proposals, costs and timeliness, it will be up to you to select what is viable and appropriate for your situation.  You should be able to comfortably postpone moving for a quite while, if you get an extra 15-20% storage capacity, yes there will be a cost but a lot better compared to moving or outsourcing.

And having gone through the process as describe above, you will be intimate with all the proposals, the costs and the timelines.  By default you will also have completed your duty of care pertaining to the preferred business practice of obtaining three quotes/proposals and weeded these out appropriately.  You will also have decided on the variety of options that had become available, eg purchase additional or change racking and/or move racking,  you may also upgrade/change your goods handling equipment or a combination of all options.  The point is, you now have cost effective options, provided at no cost.

Reports – do they work for you?

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How often do you see reports that have little meaning or are too ponderous to use, this then makes the reports ineffective, simply because no-one wants to use them.  Then there are the reports that you have been instructed to put together and although they are useful, they have little relevance to your own position or function.  What you need are reports that are concise, relevant and effective.

To design a good report, list the minimum information that is required to manage that part of your business you are reporting on.  Next, find what is the required data to compile this information. And lastly, source the data – where does it come from. Preferably, most of this data is already contained in spreadsheets (or can be imported into one easily).

Now review the source, include other fields that will beef up your report, but ensure it adds value to the report and is not just filler.  If done in excel the report should also include a tab that has the data in pictorial format – graphs! This is where KPIs can be viewed and valid assessments made.

A good report will show trends, both positive and negative, as well as status.  It will also be timely, easy to produce and even easier to read.  This then will allow you to see what is happening, or has the potential to happen, and take the appropriate action.

For all the SMBs and Operations people out there, I have written a brief on ‘Focus’ that may help you design your own reports on Freight, Inventory and Staffing (Operations reporting 101).

Note:
DATA – is raw detail, usually one line of data contains information related to one transaction. Doesn’t tell you much.
INFORMATION: an assortment/combination of data, providing information and trends in simple format.
REPORT: Information in a format that tells a story. Big picture stuff.