Common Warehouse Mistakes
By Priya Jestin, Staff Writer
How does it feel when you are on your way to an important meeting and your car breaks down? Sheer frustration! Well, as the saying goes, “stuff happens”. And it happens in warehouses also leading to the best-laid plans for a new system going haywire.
So why is it that bad stuff happens despite meticulous planning? Probably because there’s some little glitch in the plan. Sometimes, we go ahead with complicated plans without laying the proper groundwork for accomplishing these goals. This could mean that your planned strategy doesn’t move at an efficient pace and you may end up spending a lot of time doing rework because you didn’t do things in the right order. Three common mistakes that could lead a plan astray are:
When you implement a new warehouse system or process, you should be able to expect the unexpected. Remember, ‘if something can go wrong, it will’. When a problem does occur, you must modify or adjust plan you prepared months in advance to keep pace with the changing scenario. You must not try to stick to your charted course of action when you know it is not the right path any longer.
You may have laid the groundwork and done the planning meticulously. But the best test of a system is when it actually works. If the system performs differently than was anticipated, you may have to modify it to meet your requirements. Similarly, in case the profile of orders and products being handled changes between designing and implementing a system you’ll have to modify the system to meet the new requirements. In such a scenario, ensure that everyone gets on board and signs off on the changes.
Any new process or system is always a team effort. To get the most effective system up and running, it’s important to not only identify a project team up front, but to also clearly identify every team members’ roles and responsibilities.
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