Written by Jeff Boudreau, Vice President Business Development, Global Retail Supply Chain Solutions
While the concept of Lean originates in the manufacturing space, its concepts apply across an array of industries. One example is in the retail industry. The retail industry uses Lean concepts to reduce waste and increase quality within the supply chain.
Lean components can be used as a foundation for labor management to increase productivity and reduce costs in a warehouse or distribution center. Organizations can leverage lean concepts to help employees become more efficient, improve performance, and recognize and reward employees.
Two Drivers of Change
There are two primary drivers that allow companies to identify at what point they need to make changes in labor management:
- When upper management directs the organization to reduce costs
- When a facility is low on capacity and needs to push out more volume from its existing infrastructure.
Lean labor management can help improve performance in a facility, as well as the use of technology and equipment so the facility is used to its full potential. First, a lean labor approach improves processes because it creates a standardized and streamlined ways of doing things. It also improves the use of time because employees know exactly how long something should take them to complete.
Finally, by setting performance goals and giving employees the chance to be rewarded for being successful, you increase the pace that employees are working at. All of this drives up performance with minimal investment; if any at all.
Learn more about leveraging lean and labor management to improve execution and create a lean labor management program.