Earning More In The Aisles

We all work to pay our bills and provide a better living for our families.  Some of us, I hope most of us, are fortunate enough to enjoy our jobs so much that it isn’t work at all.  I’m Marty with Warehouse and Operations as a Career and today I’d like to start off with a question from a gentleman here locally. 

You know, we’re often taught and trained how to do our jobs, we’re given all the standard operating procedures, step by step, how to do the task along with all the preferred work methods but maybe we, as managers, or our managers, forget to explain more to the individual aspect of the position.  The question was posed “I’m working a lot harder than a guy named Mike yet he always gets more cases than I do.  Can you tell me how to scam like he does.  We get our pulls from our wrist computer, I can’t figure out how he always gets better pulls.”  Well, it sounds like your facility is using a selection system through their WMS.  If there’s more than just you 2 selecting there’s not much of a chance that he’s scamming the system.  Batches or pulls are downloaded from a que, next selector up gets the batch downloaded to their wrist mount. 

When productivity or activity-based pay, even incentive pay programs arrived on the scene they actually disrupted the old “this is only what I need to do mentality”.  Now we could work harder than someone next to us and we may earn more pay. But if we work smarter than the person next to us, we will earn more pay. In the world of productivity pay it is not about working hard.  It’s all about the clock. 

Everyone knows about direct time and indirect time right?  Direct time is time handling cases or moving freight. Indirect time is time spent in the restroom, washing our hands, getting our equipment signed out, anything other than handling cases while we are on the clock.  Your company may operate on KPI’s or key performance indicators.  In your position those measurements could be cases per hour selected or pallets per hour that’s putaway or replenished.  A cycle counter may have to count x number of cases an hour and make x number of adjustments.   Anything can be measured.  Lets go back to the selector.  We can know, on average, how many pallets we will load with product and how many drops we will make at the staging area in a given shift.  We can determine that because  we know how many cases are on an average batch and how much cube we’re selecting.  If our WMS is set to say 55 cube, math will tell us the number of pallets we’ll load and how many trips we’ll make to the staging area or doors to be loaded out. 

Those standards are determined by measuring everything we will be doing for any given task.  Lets stick with selection for a moment.  Your larger distribution centers may have an engineering company to come in and assign engineered standards to every part of our task.  Everything will be measured.  How many inches it is from dock door number one to the last slot of our pick paths.  And between each aisle, each bay and each slot even.  That’ll be done for each dock door as well.  With the entire warehouse now measured they would time how long it takes to drive our pallet jack to each slot and each area within those paths.  How long it takes our forklifts to raise to the second level, the third level, the fourth level and so on.  Now they can work the math against the average batches or pulls and determine what the anticipated standard should be.  Yes, it’s complicated, a lot of math and a wealth of information is gathered.  But for us as employees, well, we can use all that to our advantage in an activity based system.  All we have to do is work the system like it was designed.

OK, I talked about not working harder but working smarter. Remember, those engineers designed the system and put reasonable numbers in place for an 8 hour shift.  They came up with, lets say, 170 cases an hour would equal 100%.  The average experienced selector will pull 170 cases an hour.  They have added all our human traits in, saying hi to each other, bathroom breaks, maybe slowly separating our pallets for the next batch, going to breaks early and returning a little late.  They knew that we were going to stop in the aisles and talk for a minute about our weekend plans.  All that is figured on us being the average employee. All we have to do is not be that average employee.  And that’s exactly how we work less by thinking more.  Maybe I should say focusing more. 

I had this friend once, I don’t guess I ever knew his real name, we called him dupee.  Dupee always, and I mean every signal night ended up with more cases pulled than I did. I don’t mean occasionally, I mean for 3 years I never beat him case wise.  I’d pass him up in an aisle and the next thing I’d know was I was passing him again in another aisle.  I’d never see him catch up to me, yet, their’d I be passing him again?  We always joked about it, actually, I always accused him of scamming or cheating, not so much joking.  Years later the light bulb went off in my head.  Dupee wasn't wasting time driving down aisles he didn't have a pick in.  He’d skip sometimes like 5 aisles and back track, running his path the most efficient route possible, hense why I’d pass him like 3 times in the same hour.  Dupee came in, signed out for his equipment, grabbed his pallets and stayed focused on his task at hand.  He never stopped and joked with us or complained about anybody, shoot, I don’t even know what he did on the weekends because he never brought it up!  He’d be on his equipment when break time arrived and be back on it the minute break was over.  Now, Dupee loved lunch time.  He’d talk with us and joke around then but he never hung around after the bell.  Dupee was just working the system.  Every minute the machine was counting him as working or direct time, he had a case in his hands.  He only stopped handling cases during scheduled indirect time.  He was working 20% less than me and getting 20% more credit for it!  Like I said, I figured it out.  Took me three years, but I’m a slow learner.  Over the next 3 years we were the top performers in the aisles.  Once I learned how to stay focused I actually had more fun pulling.  It became a game to maneuver the aisles and beat the system.

So to answer the question, your fellow employee Mike probably isn’t scamming the system.  That’d be hard to do in this day and age.  He’s just working it, as it was designed.  Watch him this week, closely, and I bet next week you’ll be out pulling him!

We just walked through how an order selector can work the system but the exact same holds true for any direct positions.  Even non-productivity positions can perform better by staying focused and, well, working like we’re being paid for!  A couple of weeks ago I had a young gentleman tell me it was his right to talk to people.  He’d been coached about spending too much time conversing with others on the front docks.  His supervisor had told him he wasn’t in high school any more, we weren’t here to socialize, we’re here to work and for him to get busy.  Now I think the supervisor could have handled it a little better, but you’d have to agree he was on point.  We’re being paid to do a job and we should just get it done.  I’ve been watching the employee for a couple of months now, he’ll make a top producer one day.  He’s already one of the better than average unloaders.  He’s working the numbers.  Once he figures out to stay focused he’s going to be one of the top earners! 

I do a lot of talking about having a plan and a goal here at WAOC.  Things like what we talked about today is a plan and a goal.  The gentleman that presented the question has a plan, he is going to out pull mike.  His goal is to be a top selector.  Once we’ve identified our goal it’s easy to develop our plan and easy to achieve it! 

So on that note we’ll wrap up another episode!  If your enjoying the show please subscribe and maybe tell a good friend about it!  And remember we can be found on Facebook and Twitter using @whseandops and one of my favorite groups is the warehouse equipment operator's community on Facebook as well. 

Stay strong and stay Safe in our personal lives and our work environments!