Caveats of Buying Second-Hand Equipment
Buying used equipment can save you money up front. But it can also cost you more in the long run. Keep these stipulations in mind when considering preowned equipment. ...
Supporting Telephone, E-mail and Chat Inquiries
Can one agent handle telephone, e-mail, and chat inquries? And is that even a good idea? That depends on the communication skills you evaluated your agents on prior to hiring them and/or any additional training you have provided them since. Verbal and written communication skills are two distinct competencies, and being well-versed in one doesn't necessarily guarantee success in the other....
Four Steps in Selecting a Business System
Whether your company needs a commercially packaged warehouse management system, point of sales system, an inventory control system, a direct-to-customer order management system --or some combination of the aforementioned, selecting of the right system is a major undertaking....
Quick Tip: Behold the Mouse Cart
Are you looking to build a better mouse trap in your facility? You might start with the mouse cart. What's a mouse cart, you ask? The mouse cart is a unique vehicle that can get a picker quickly around the facility. It is ideal for instances that require long travels between picks....
How You Can Harvest Acres of Diamonds
You wouldn't think many operations execs could learn from book but “Acres of Diamonds” by Russell H. Conwell may hold a lesson for distribution center managers. The book tells the story of a man who sells his farm to search for diamonds. He spends his life searching for riches and dies a pauper. After the sale, acres of diamonds were discovered on his farm....
Survey: Outsourcing Still Maturing
A recent survey from Raleigh, NC-based supply chain solutions provider Tompkins Associates finds that despite its rapid growth, outsourcing is still a maturing industry,” according to Steven Simonson, principal and author of the "Outsourced DC Operations" report. “Currently, only a third of respondents to the benchmarking and best practices survey are outsourcing some portion of their distribution operations. Much room exists for continued expansion,” he says....
Leveraging Technology for Fulfillment Success
Technology is the cornerstone of an efficient fulfillment operation. It’s through technology that guesswork is eliminated from the fulfillment process, human error is reduced, and products and content go to market faster and at a lower cost....
Ask the Fulfillment Doctor: Dashboard Dials
Imagine a series of dials in the corporate cockpit that reflect key indicators in customer service, sales tracking, and profitability. When tightly structured, these dials can give management an accurate and timely picture of the business—a carefully calibrated corporate spot check. ...
Are You Overlooking the Profit Opportunity in Your Receiving Operation?
This is the first of a two-part series. This article examines how establishing receiving practices can increase your bottom line. Part two will discuss how to use this information to improve your operation and your profits....
Weighing Land Availability and Costs in Site Selection
A decade ago land cost, along with construction cost, were the primary site selection factors when determining where to locate a warehouse or distribution center. Today, however, even in an environment where land and rental costs are increasing, these factors are no longer the primary consideration....
Getting a Grip on Agent Time Utilization, Part II
Once the team has defined the work states, it should establish a start date and train the agents on work-state definitions. It usually helps to train the agents in small groups and to produce a job aid that can be placed in their workspace for quick reference (don’t worry, agents quickly memorize the activities and their corresponding work states)....
The Skinny on Put-to-light
Put to light is a way to direct activities such as single item distribution and order consolidation via light directed devices. Put to light uses the same hardware as a pick-to- light system, but it reverses the process....
10 Ways to Improve Vendor Quality Control
If you want to improve your vendor quality control without having to dive headlong into a new way of doing business, take heart. There is an option that relies on the basics of upholding merchandise quality. These ten strategies can improve your vendor quality control program or help you design such a program if you do not have one in place today....
Identifying Challenges and Opportunities
If you are like most distribution center managers, you know that your existing operation has a number of unsolved challenges and problems that your people grapple with on a daily, weekly, and seasonal basis. ...
15 Areas Ripe for Cost-Cutting
If you’re like many of your colleagues, you’ve been asked to reduce operations costs or increase your department’s productivity and efficiency. Here are 15 areas to look at in the contact center and the distribution center:...
«Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 Next»
