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Would anyone have a reference to engineering standards for various warehouse functions? ie. receiving, put away, replenishment, picking, shipping. Thanks!
There may not be a standard across all the warehouses, even if the processes are similar.
For example, putaway is a common process in all the warehouses.
However, putting away FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) versus putting away pharmaceutical drugs are different. FMCG may be putting away as floor staging, whereas pharmaceutical drugs are put away in locked cages (to prevent pilferages).
Having said that, some companies are using certain methods to determine the engineer standards as productivity benchmarks. My previous experiences to determine the productivity of the warehouse functions were to use stop watch to determine the efficiency.
The method was quite similar to the one described below.
Some companies are using MOST (Maynard Operation Sequence Technique). They break down the processes into incremental steps and peg the steps against benchmarked figures. This is more commonly seen in manufacturing environment where the operators are repetitively performing the same actions. For warehousing, it might be slightly challenging.
https://www.pomsmeetings.org/confpapers/059/059-0058.pdf
Main objective is to be efficient and reduce those non-value-adding activities.
Which happens often in operations.
For example, while a picker is doing his job to complete an order, someone will interrupt him, sstopping him for a chit chat.
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