Lean Warehousing

Driving Supply Chain Effectiveness by Leaning

Your Warehouse
Chris Barnes – Consultant, Product Support Services, QAD
Lean Warehousing

Safe Harbor Statement

The following is intended to outline QAD’s general
product direction. It is intended for information
purposes only, and may not be incorporated into
any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver
any material, code, functional capabilities, and
should not be relied upon in making purchasing
decisions. The development, release, and timing
of any features or functional capabilities
described for QAD’s products remains at the sole
discretion of QAD.

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Lean Warehousing

Objectives
• Best practices you can implement today
• Understand advance strategies with QAD
Warehousing
• Cover 50 lean warehousing practices

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Lean Warehousing

Tell Me About You…

• Do you have a warehouse
• Any lean initiatives in the warehouse
• Do you use WMS
• What would you like to get from this session

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Lean Warehousing

Warehousing Defined
• A building, or a part of one, for the storage
of goods or merchandise
• To some in the JIT world, warehousing is
considered a waste

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Lean Warehousing

“Top Pressures” Driving Lean Warehousing

• 45% do more with less
• 35% increased demand / supply fluctuations
• 31% better utilization of resources
• 39% rising operating costs
• 28% customer turn time requests
• 28% customer turn time requests

Source: Aberdeen Group - Warehouse Management Excellence, Maximizing Resources & Efficiency, Nov 2010

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Lean Warehousing

“Top Actions” to Improve Warehouse Management

• 54% Better systems integration
• 39% Improve labor efficiency by reassessing
software and warehouse resources
• 39% Increase visibility into inventory and order status
• 36% Improve throughput through systems or
automation
• 32% Realign / consolidate products across our
facilities
• 21% Improve perfect order rate by improving pick
accuracy and on-time shipment
Source: Aberdeen Group - Warehouse Management Excellence, Maximizing Resources & Efficiency, Nov 2010

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Lean Warehousing

Lean Warehousing Principles

• Flexibility
• Lead time reduction
• Risk reduction
• Reduce variation
• Business plans as guidelines

Source: Aberdeen Group - Warehouse Management Excellence, Maximizing Resources & Efficiency, Nov 2010

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Lean Warehousing

50 Ways to Lean Your Warehouse

1. Get organized
2. Marked aisles & areas
3. Look at lighting
4. Straight flows
5. Slotting strategy
6. Minimize travel
7. Flexible picking strategies

Source: Aberdeen Group - Warehouse Management Excellence, Maximizing Resources & Efficiency, Nov 2010

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Lean Warehousing

QAD Warehousing Flexible Picking

• Discrete
• Batch
• Cluster
• Zone
• Pick & pass

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Lean Warehousing

50 Ways to Lean Your Warehouse

8. Establish appropriate pick locations
9. Use voice pick where appropriate
10. Measure warehouse performance
11. Share performance information
12. Business intelligence
13. Use RF data collection
14. Leverage alerts & messaging

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Lean Warehousing

RF Task Management
and inquiries save time
and provide real-time
information updates.

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Lean Warehousing

Alerts and Instant Messaging

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Lean Warehousing

RF Messaging

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Lean Warehousing

50 Ways to Lean Your Warehouse

15. Wave management
16. Ensure inventory positions
17. Focus on inventory accuracy
18. Use cycle counting
19. Get rid of excess inventory
20. Get rid of space wasters
21. Store obsolete materials off-site
22. Improve cube utilization
23. Vary storage location sizes

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Lean Warehousing

Cube Utilization

Vertical
Honeycombing

wasted space

improved
beam spacing

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Lean Warehousing

50 Ways to Lean Your Warehouse

24. Know your order profile
25. Store loads according to size
26. Space allocation by planned inventory levels
27. Use reserve storage and forward pick
28. Implement random storage

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Lean Warehousing

Reserve Storage / Forward Pick

• Reserve = Random
Unit 4 Unit 1 Unit 2 Unit 3

Reserve Loc Reserve Loc

• Forward Pick = Dedicated

040-BX-001 040-EA-001

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Lean Warehousing

50 Ways to Lean Your Warehouse

29. Consider fluid loading
30. Use the correct equipment
31. Consider planned & opportunistic cross
docking
32. Leverage advanced shipment notice (ASN)
33. Minimize packaging
34. Store receipts without checking or repacking
35. Run a scheduled dock
36. Replace checking with auditing

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Lean Warehousing

50 Ways to Lean Your Warehouse

37. Quality sampling and auditing available on
receipt
38. Measure to improve labor performance
39. Cross train
40. Identify your superstars
41. Use standard operating procedures
42. Perform layout assessment
43. Minimize aisle widths
44. Optimize staging areas

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Lean Warehousing

50 Ways to Lean Your Warehouse

45. Store in aisles
46. Standardize pallet sizes
47. Standardize unit loads
48. Storage racks over dock doors
49. Case flow racks in pallet racks
50. Interleave work tasks bonus
50 ½. Leverage a solid WMS

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Lean Warehousing

QAD WMS is Fully Integrated into QAD Apps

QAD Apps
Task Yard & Dock
Management Management

Productivity
Receiving
Tracking

Inventory
VAS
Lot, S/N, Exp

Wave Cross
Planning Docking

Shipping /
Put-Away
Manifesting

Optimized
Slotting
Picking
Replenishment

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 Field Readiness

Belt

Black
Green
EAM
EAM White
Lean Warehousing

DM
DM

BIBI

WMS
WMS

SCP
SCP

SSM
SSM
Value Chain Certification

Configurator
Configurator

PSW
MSW/ /PSW
MSW
Value Chain Certification

Transportation
Transportation

Purchasing

Financials
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Lean Warehousing

Core Principles of Lean Warehousing

• Visible customer consumption
• Reduce lead time
• Pull system
• Reduce variation
• Create velocity
• Focus on process discipline
• Total cost of fulfillment

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Lean Warehousing

Metrics Affected
Process Benefit Value

Bin Level Location Mgt •Reduced labor cost • -20 to 30%

•Improved fill rate • +10 to 40 pts
•Reduced Inventory level • -10 to 30%
•Improved Inventory accuracy • To 99.9%
•Less warehouse space • -20 to 50%

Receiving •Labor reduction •-20 to 30%

Real Time Put Away, •Labor reduction •-20 to 30%

Product Slotting •Inventory accuracy improved •To 99.9%

Mobile Device Based •Labor reduction •-20 to 30%

Order Fulfillment

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Lean Warehousing

Next Steps
• Ask your account manager for a Lean
Warehousing Q−Scan

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Lean Warehousing

Questions & Answers

Chris Barnes: c9b@qad.com

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www.qad.com
© QAD Inc

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