I have asked many customers and prospects what their perception was of their employees level of concern for the business. I get a range of answers from wonderful to they don’t care a bit. In most businesses it is very difficult to measure an employee’s productivity and accountability in a fair and unbiased way. In the warehouse this becomes an issue when you have people handling your most prized asset, your inventory.
So how does a warehouse management system help create employee accountability and productivity? The short answer is by tracking the activity of each warehouse employee as they go about their daily work. A warehouse management system utilizes handheld computers that each picker, receiver and stock handler, log into and will use to perform their work. Each time they scan an item to pick, receive, or move it; the system captures that data and stores it using the user’s login information. This information is then available to be reviewed by management. So how does this help? If a picker is making picking mistakes you can tell who it is and what mistakes were made. If a person is not working there will be a gap in the activity and that is shown on the employee activity report. If a stock handler puts the wrong item in a bin or rack you can see it, and fix it. In receiving, if a person receives in the wrong product or takes too long to do a receipt that gets recorded.
There are many ways businesses use this information that is gathered by a warehouse management system. It can be used to better train employees. Many companies use it to pay incentive bonuses. It can be used to remediate problems employees are having with their work. And it can help weed out the people that really don’t care about what they are doing. In most cases this issue takes care of itself because the people that don’t care about doing a good job do not want to held accountable for their work and so they leave before the WMS is even installed.
A warehouse management system provides a business with the tools to create a productive, caring and connected work environment in the warehouse. It helps the people you have entrusted with guarding and handling your inventory or as I like to refer to it your gold.
