In the world of manufacturing, warehousing and distribution, how does a company determine what they need to improve, add, or change in their operations in order to generate growth, improve return on investment (ROI) and stay competitive?

As with any business in the modern world, the times are changing and evolving technology never sleeps. You’re busy running a business and don’t have time to be an expert on the latest technology. You do, however, need to know enough to ask the right questions. Working with expert partners can help you break it all down into digestible portions and help you better run your business.

A few overarching factors to consider that will help drive these decisions to manage information and costs, and improve the bottom line include:

• Process efficiency
• Storage effectiveness
• Material flow

Continuous Improvement
While these are the key components to evaluate, they certainly aren’t the only factors to consider. In fact, there are myriad other factors needed for an intelligent system design, including:

• Work in process (WIP)
• Product characteristics (i.e., cold, frozen, perishable, fragile, etc.)
• Cubic velocity of inventory and any FIFO requirements
• Pick rates
• Product loss (i.e., damaged, misplaced, waste, shrinkage, etc.)

Analyzing and validating all the data will help draw the correct conclusions. Using this extensive information will help determine the most effective solutions to customize your needs. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone. We understand you may be feeling pressure on all levels, needing to run the business while planning and evaluating strategic investments can consume much of your time and be quite daunting.

Making the Most of your Time and Investments
By working with subject matter experts, they will not only ask relevant and insightful questions but will take the time to understand your situation and the tradeoffs to maintaining your current systems versus implementing new ones. Change is inevitable but you need to develop priorities and a roadmap with timeframes or the implementation requirements can upset your entire operation. The right professionals at your side can help achieve that.

For a free walkthrough analysis of your current operation, contact Abel Womack- it’s what we do.