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DCS’s design and engineering team has more than 40 years of experience creating unique parcel handling systems for diverse customer applications. With installations including semi-automated handling in small city distribution centers and fully automated, integrated hubs with advanced conveyor and sorter equipment, DCS routinely thinks outside the box.
DCS designs and implements end-to-end warehouse automation solutions for e-commerce and multi-channel retailers that address numerous workflow challenges. This includes solutions for receiving, putaway, storage, replenishment, order fulfillment, picking, packing, sortation, and outbound shipping. Our custom integrated warehouse, distribution, and fulfillment systems draw from a deep pool of conventional, semi-automated, and automated material handling technologies.
Whether an operation is considering the construction of a new distribution or fulfillment center, or a retrofit or expansion of an existing facility, it’s important to create a solution that fits the overarching supply chain strategy. DCS has four decades of experience designing and integrating comprehensive, end-to-end material handling solutions that meet a multitude of operational goals. Whether conventional, semi-automated, or fully automated, DCS can help your organization implement a custom solution that meets its goals while maximizing return on investment (ROI).
The DCS Supply Chain Consulting team offers a range of services to help your operations address the challenges it faces. Working in partnership with you, DCS consultants analyze your business data- existing workforce, workflow processes, inventory, order data, operations, and more- to determine a strategy that addresses your unique needs. Whether you need an operations assessment, process improvement recommendations, or distribution design services, DCS consultants will help guide you to the material handling system or operational solution that best meets your current and future needs, as well as your budget.
Keeping your warehouse operations and material handling systems running smoothly and at the peak of productivity are the goals of DCS’ Customer Service Team. By partnering with DCS, your warehouse automation solution is supported from commissioning to end of life. You’ll receive comprehensive in-house training of your personnel, including specialized training of your designated internal system expert. Plus, DCS offers a complete package of spare parts and expert system troubleshooting support from qualified engineers dedicated to your installation.
DCS offers a broad range of material handling equipment and automated system design, installation, and integration services for a multitude of projects. These include retrofits, expansions, upgrades, and more. While every project is unique, our system design and execution processes are the same, encompassing meticulous attention to detail, frequent communication, and a dedicated partnership with our clients.
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Designed Conveyor Systems (DCS) has 40 years of experience serving major clients in multiple industries by providing material handling, full-scale warehouse operations, and conveyor design solutions that are custom crafted for their needs. DCS does not sell ready-made conveyor systems but builds relationships that empower collaboration to craft custom warehouse designs together. DCS utilizes consulting, engineering design, project management, installation services, and client support to ensure our customers can keep their promises to deliver on time.
With more than 40 years of experience providing automated system design, installation, and integration services, DCS has created solutions for companies throughout the United States in a broad range of industries and markets. We’ve completed more than 1500 projects ranging from greenfield facilities with completely new systems to expansions and retrofits of existing operations.
# How to Gain Warehouse Efficiency and Productivity Without a Major Capital Investment in Automation
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How to Gain Warehouse Efficiency and Productivity Without a Major Capital Investment in Automation
**Date Posted:**
08.24.21
## Gain Warehouse Productivity with Affordable Warehouse Automation
As warehouses and distribution centers have struggled to keep up with the volatile shifts in consumer demands over the past year, many  suppliers have been touting the benefits of automation. These technologies can absolutely improve an operation’s efficiency and productivity, and they certainly are worth investigating.
But not every operation can afford the type of capital investment required of automated technologies. Or, for that matter – with lead times being so extended these days – many companies can’t wait 12 to 36 months for a **warehouse automation implementation** to help alleviate their throughput issues.
Fortunately, there is a solution that can improve efficient warehouse operations and productivity without a major investment in money or wait time: process improvement.
Some organizations have internal groups or specific managers focused on continuous process improvement, others use independent consultants to leverage an outsider’s unbiased expertise – and some rely on both. Regardless of who spearheads the effort, the methodology involved in analyzing and streamlining existing processes is the same.
**Step 1: Establish organization-wide metrics.**
Often, one of the biggest handling process inefficiencies starts with a lack of alignment across the organization on metrics. This disconnect most frequently happens between purchasing and warehouse operations, as the two departments are often measured on completely different key performance indicators (KPIs).
For example, if purchasing department employee compensation is partially based on their ability to negotiate better pricing, that person might be incentivized to buy five truckloads of canned soup at a $0.10/can discount – in May. However, at the warehouse, maximizing cubic utilization might be the most important metric. So, when the five truckloads arrive at the distribution center, there’s no excess capacity available to accommodate an out-of-season bulk buy and process efficiencies fly out the window.
Therefore, it’s important to first establish organization-wide metrics that align strategically with the overarching company objectives before attempting to improve processes. Only then can you be sure that the process improvements implemented will deliver on the goals.
**Step 2: Begin at the beginning.**
A warehouse or distribution center process improvement project nearly always means streamlining the processes that revolve around handling inventory. Therefore, it makes sense to start evaluating processes at the point of inventory receipt, then working through putaway, storage, replenishment, order picking, packing, and outbound shipping.
Through each phase of the handling process, document how many times an item is touched, all required data entry points, and the capture methodology (RF scan of a barcode, manually keying in data, passage through a scan tunnel, and so on). Record each portion of the process through each workflow area as a separate line item. It helps to do this visually, either with sticky notes on a whiteboard or in a spreadsheet – one note or cell per process step.
**Step 3: Determine what steps are – and aren’t – adding value.**
A value-added step is something the company’s customers will pay for; non-value-added steps are everything else. One of the easiest ways to see how many value-added versus non-value-added steps are occurring within a process is to color-code them. Consider using green sticky notes or spreadsheet cells to indicate a value-added step in the process; mark the non-value-added steps in a different color, such as red. Then share the findings with the appropriate internal stakeholders.
Company personnel is often surprised, if not shocked, to see how many non-value-added steps happen within every handling process. More than one senior executive has announced that it’s not possible that their warehousing team could be performing so many superfluous steps, only to be contradicted by a floor-level associate who confirms that indeed they do.
**Step 4: Eliminate the non-value-added steps.**
The point of this exercise is not to shock upper-level management, however. It’s to assess and determine which of the non-value-added steps can be totally eliminated or combined into other steps to streamline the process. While many people in the organization likely know how things happen in the warehouse, very few know what process steps are occurring at a granular level.
This is a great time to encourage the operations team to channel their inner 3-year-olds and ask why? as in: Why do we do this step, and what benefit does it bring to our operations? Often a step was added to the process years ago to capture a specific piece of information or verify inventory or pick accuracy, but it’s become redundant and unnecessary today. If a process that required 20 steps has five of those steps removed immediately, that’s already a 25% improvement in productivity and efficiency.
**Step 5: Establish a time standard for the new process.**
While eliminating process steps might intuitively suggest that productivity and efficiency will improve, you won’t know by how much unless you measure. The basis for this determination is a comparison of the actual demonstrated performance prior to making the changes against the current performance with the new, streamlined process.
This is often where an outside consultant brings additional value – by helping to quantify the improvement. The optimization of the process should be borne out in the numbers. For example, if it was taking an associate five minutes to document the intake of a pallet at receiving and now it only takes three minutes, that’s a 40% improvement in efficiency. When that improvement rate is multiplied by the number of associates assigned to receive product and their hourly wages, operations can easily demonstrate the value of efficient warehouse operations.
**Looking for more ideas on how to improve your facility’s operational performance? To learn more about working with DCS, **
### Author
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**Mark Kidwell,** Director of Supply Chain Consulting, markk@designedconveyor.com
With over 35 years in the material handling industry, Mark Kidwell provides valuable solutions for our clients regarding operations and process improvement, labor efficiency, DC design, and inventory management consultation.
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