Productivity has rocketed since The Works introduced a workforce management system at its distribution centre. Supply chain chief Diane Smith tells Joanna Perry how it was achieved

Without resorting to robots, increasing the work rate of warehouse staff by a quarter seems an impossible task. Yet The Works supply chain manager Diane Smith has achieved just this and managed to keep her staff onside as well.

Smith joined the company in 2002 with a focus on implementing both warehouse and workforce management systems. This Christmas will be the first peak trading period that both systems, provided by Red Prairie, are fully up and running.

Speaking to an audience of her peers at Red Prairie’s annual customer conference, Smith explained that The Works made a success of the workforce management system by running it in the background at the Sutton Coldfield distribution centre initially. Doing this over the peak trading period a year ago enabled the retailer to generate data on what was happening.

At this point, she says, staff were sceptical about how the mooted improvements could be achieved. But the results speak for themselves. Productivity rose 25 per cent in the five months after the system was introduced. Just as impressive is the fact that The Works continues to operate out of the same distribution centre, despite the fact that store numbers have nearly doubled from 165 to 306 since both the systems were introduced.

Slowly but surely, as the workforce system was implemented, managers and staff began to see the benefits, especially with Smith’s focus on the idea that it should help them work smarter, not harder.

Red Prairie service director Ryan Uhlenkamp explains how the system is introduced. “We build a replica of the map and work out how long it should take to get from point to point and times for handling items. More time is given, for instance, if the picker has to bend down to pick something up from a bottom shelf,” he says.

Preferred working methods are defined and then tested to see how long they should take. This standard is individual to each warehouse and is not designed to be the absolute maximum a picker could achieve. A time value is allocated to each pick that a worker does. Then, any time they should reasonably take doing indirect tasks during their shift, as well as their allocated break, are added to this. A number of key members of staff helped define the preferred methods of working and then went out into the warehouse with stopwatches to prove that they were achievable.

Once the system is collecting live data on workers’ performance, it can report on what they have achieved during a shift compared with what it thinks they should have achieved in the given time. The goal is to achieve 100 per cent of the productivity standard that has been set.

At The Works, there was an observation stage, where only supervisors could see the figures, because they wanted to improve the least productive workers gradually without making them feel that they were being singled out for poor performance. Reporting to the pickers was phased in as productivity levels rose.

Smith explains: “We had some staff at 80 per cent and others at 60 per cent – we wanted to push them up without seeming like we were slave-drivers.

“We didn’t want to make people operating at the lower levels feel inadequate. So we started to give them one-to-one feedback before publishing the figures. We now put figures up on the board the next day, so they know how well they have performed.”

This training gave staff defined working methods, without turning them into robots. In fact, quite the opposite has been achieved, with pickers encouraged to think more about their personal productivity. For instance, they are encouraged to carry rubbish on their picking vehicle until they come to a collection point, rather than making special trips to throw things away.

REMOVING BARRIERS
Physical changes to the warehouse were made to ensure staff would be capable of operating at 100 per cent against the standard. The Works tackled barriers to staff productivity and even physical barriers by considering things such as where pallets and tubs are located around the warehouse, putting wrapping material at the end of every aisle and implementing other measures to minimise wasted time between picks.

In addition, the system has allowed managers to cut down on unproductive practices. The reports created in the system helped the company understand where staff were spending their time. While some indirect activity – such as attending a meeting or changing a battery in a barcode scanner gun – is necessary, the system has helped to refocus workers’ time on more direct activities.

Smith explains: “Our supervisors were missing things. For instance, some people were leaving 10 minutes before their shift ended to go and change their shoes and get their jacket before clocking out. But 30 to 50 people times five minutes or so is an awful lot of picking time.”

She gives another example of indirect activity that was not necessary and has been easy to spot through the system. “We have a 6am until 2pm and, from 1.30pm onwards, workers on the shift didn’t see the point of starting another pick. 10 to 15 minutes of sweeping the warehouse floor was wasting a tremendous amount of time. Now they pick until 1.55pm and we have specific people to tidy the warehouse and do the sweeping. This was a big win for us,” she explains.

“We had operated the warehouse management system for two years and not noticed that people were sweeping for the last 20 minutes of their shift.”

Because the system creates individual performance targets for every worker and each shift, based on the tasks they undertake, no one can complain that their performance looks worse because they have been given more difficult jobs. “Now they are credited for every pick,” says Smith. “Everyone is on the same level playing field and there is no such thing as a good or bad order.”

In addition, she says that the system is particularly good at helping to monitor the progress of new permanent members of staff and agency staff. “We can say that, by week six, they should be operating at 90 per cent of the standard target. We can also tell the agency when their staff aren’t performing to the standard that we expect and penalise them,” she says.

Having clearly defined working methods also makes it quicker and easier to train new and agency staff. Smith explains that it is possible to get agency staff up and running within an hour.

The Works picking manager is now one of the most vocal promoters of the system, because it gives supervisors the information they need to improve efficiencies, rather than a tool with which to beat their staff. It has also changed the way supervisors work. “They can be proactive instead of reactive after a few hours [of poor performance], rather than wondering the next day why performance has been so bad,” Smith says.

The system was introduced without an official incentives scheme for improved performance. However, small rewards such as meal vouchers for the staff restaurant have been given by the picking manager when staff achieved 100 per cent of the standard.

Smith says that she doesn’t think employers need to pay staff bonuses to improve their performance. However, The Works will look at how it rewards staff who consistently achieve above 100 per cent of the standard they are aiming for.

She says: “We are looking at incentives still – which we will introduce in time – but we needed a performance benchmark first, which the workforce management system has allowed us to get. An incentives programme will allow us to achieve further efficiencies and identify opportunities.”

At present, The Works is running at about 96 per cent of the productivity standard it hopes to achieve. However, Smith says that, given that the retailer has just taken on about 20 recruits, this dip below 100 per cent is to be expected.

If her mantra of work smarter, not harder rubs off on them as much as it has on the longer-serving members of staff, it seems likely that her employees will be able to give more than 100 per cent this Christmas.