Get What You Pay For

You need extra staff for the season, but you do not need permanent employees nor can you afford to hire workers permanently and pay them benefits. What do you do? The next logical step is to contact a temporary staffing company for help, but unfortunately, you have never used a staffing company and you do not know what to ask.

What now?
When placing an order for a temporary employee, you need to take into account the job responsibilities along with the necessary background and drug screens required. The job duties are easy enough to address. Provide a complete position description to the recruiter along with lifting requirement, time slot, and hourly wage that you expect to pay the employee. Make sure to ask the recruiter about the mark-up. This is the fee that you will pay the firm. If you are interested in a temporary to hire conversion, there are two things to beware. Often, a firm will tell you that there is a 90-day conversion period, but they do not specify if it is 720, which includes weekends, or 520 hours, which does not. Also, make sure there is no conversion fee at the end the 90-day period.

Will you require drug screen and background check?
If you do, confirm with the staffing firm if they charge extra for this service. Some staffing companies do charge and some will include it as part of the service. Unfortunately, there are those companies that will not fulfill their part of the service, so it would be a good idea to have the drug screens conducted through a drug screening facility where the chain of custody can be returned to you for confirmation that the drug screen is complete and the individual has passed.

Recruiting firms can be a handy tool for warehouse facilities. Just make sure that you get what you pay for.

Warehouse Layout

Warehouse needs change over time. Perhaps you started out focusing your needs more on storage but the markets has changed and now you need to focus on picking and packing instead. Now the fun begins. It is time to re-evaluate your needs and determine if you need to reface, replace, or expand. You need to evaluate your current client base, conduct trend analysis, and try to determine the future trend will be. This will help you to invest your energy and money in the best possible manner.

Where is your focus?
The key is to synchronize storage, technology, and transactions. The technology and layout of your warehouse will be determined by its most pressing needs. For instance, is your warehouse being used primarily for storage or for picking and packing or is it high storage high transaction warehouse that requires the layout to be precisely planned and needs to be flexible in order to accommodate rapidly changing needs?

In order to determine your warehouse’s layout, first determine your priority, assess your current situation and what your needs are, then create and implement your plan. Make sure to institute a system to track your progress to see if the changes that have been instituted are working or if you need to tweak the layout to make the process more effective.

Keep asking yourself, managers, and front line workers what is working and what could use some attention. Are the storage shelves too far apart? Is the product line that needs to be picked and packed in an order that allows the worker to work quickly and efficiently? Track Track Track.

about.com: Planning Your Warehouse Layout

Air Quality In An Industrial Warehouse

You take air for granted until you do not have enough or it is poor quality. As we have become industrialized, there are numerous OSHA requirements that need to be met to keep an operation running smoothly and most important keep workers safe from exposure to carcinogens that affect their health and well-being.

Choosing a filtration system will depend on the type of commercial industry that the warehouse is involved. Whether the warehouse handles solely distribution or all aspects of third party logistics, air quality must be taken into consideration. There are filtrations systems that treat general air cleanser for process dust and general air quality improvement such as ambient air cleaning for entire rooms. A manufacturing facility that deals in metal fabrication will need to install an air quality system that can remove fine metal particles than can become airborne. A warehouse facility that has a welding system is concerned with exposure concerns to welding smoke and fumes. This opens up the exposure to manganese, chromium, nickel, and a variety of toxic metals and fumes, which is a very real danger to employees.

It is important to install an air purification system that will address any problem area within the warehouse. Those areas may be paint departments, oil mist collection, weld smoke, or dust collections. Whatever the situation, make sure to review federal and state regulations that may affect your air filtration decisions.

Specialized Logistics Warehouse

Not all warehouses are created the same. Using a warehouse that does not specialize in return logistics will ultimately cost you more money than it should in lost revenue, wasted time, unhappy customers, and lost commodities. In addition, a liberal return policy typically means increased sales because customers feel more customers making purchases if they know that he or she can return or exchange the item.

Unfortunately, no one likes to handle products that have been sent back to the manufacturer, so what is involved in return logistics?

• A warehouse that deals in returns has the facility to protect brand equity by providing security to protect product and intellectual theft by conducting employee backgrounds and safety equipment such as close circuit surveillance.
• A seasoned returns and waste specialist is essential in establishing legal policies and procedures in order maintain OSHA and EPA standards, conduct certified destruction, records keeping, safety, and proper labeling requirements.
• Returns based processing software is necessary to track returns and claims data for payment and exception reports. This software also includes credit and debit postings to track revenue.
• Specialized workers and storage facility is required in order to review incoming parts to provide returns validation, repairs, and conduct the quality control process for exiting products.
• Finally, matching the client’s scheduling requirements ensures that despite the inconvenience of doing a return or exchange, you will do everything possible to alleviate any inconvenience. Make sure to track the inbound as well as outbound transportation process.

Make certain that the warehouse is certified to handle the particular product this is returned as well as follows specific disposal procedures when required. All this is done in an effort to ensure that you company’s name remains in good standing.

Reverse Logistics

Okay, so I have talked about supply chain and logistics but something that manages do not often like to think about as part of the supply chain process is reverse logistics also known as return processing. There a various goals to accomplish some of which include to minimize return costs, remanufacture and refurbish products and materials, management and sales of surplus and returned equipment, and keep customers and investors happy.

Because companies typically see returns logistics as a costs rather than revenue, management will typically want to outsource this service. It is important to use a warehouse service that specializes in reverse logistics and keeps technicians on staff that is certified to handle repairs and testing for your specific industry as well as maintain inventory for replacement parts. Hiring a company that specializes in soft goods will not do you any good if your product line is technically based.

Ultimately, the opportunity is there to reduce costs, reduce exchange time, increase customer satisfaction, and introduce new revenue streams.
Use an efficient service that has the capacity to handle customer exchanges or repairs quickly.

• The goal is to track the item from time of call to departure back to the customer. Many will do so using a real-time web bases system.
  
• Another option in dealing with surplus and refurbished goods is to introduce them to a secondary market, donate them to charity, or liquidate them.
  

Finding a warehouse service that can provide a service that can rework, repackage, and help increase your revenue is the appropriate partner for you.

Sources
Reverse Logistics Association
Inboundlogistics.com

Six Sigma

Surprisingly enough quality analysis is a relatively new concept being only a few decades old. Poor quality leads to poor returns, so where do you start in the process of process improvement? In the mid 1980 six sigma was developed to eliminate the process variation ultimately reducing or eliminating waste. In order to increase process quality, several issues need to be reviewed and addressed. The process is the same each time and follows the acronym DMAIC: Define the goals, Measure the statistical data, analyze, improve the process and Control, or regulate the performance.

Ultimately, the goal is to improve the production using a data driven approach to reduce defects in the defects. This same process can be used in all area of business including warehousing, production, human resources, order entry, technical support, and infinity. One of the key areas of import is data tracking. A simple approach is to employ specifically developed software that can utilize data to track data, create statistical data, and allow you to track historical data and trends.

It would be best to employ a “black belt” leader to oversee the process. The alternative is to acquire the certification yourself, but consider that it would take many hours to achieve. Either way, it would be time well spent.


Allbusiness.com/Gaining Value
Allbusiness.com/design the six sigma

Warehouses and Workers' Compensation Liability

If you think you can get away without workers’ compensation insurance to save on costs. Think again. Not only is it illegal not to have workers’ compensation insurance, but an injured worker that files a claim can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. An injury as silly as having an insect fly into an employee’s ear while working on your premises can cost you several thousand dollars in doctor’s bills even legal fees. By having this insurance, the employee relinquishes the right to sue the employer for negligence, so unless you can afford to be sued in case of an employee’s injury or illness, it would behoove you to be covered.

In order to ensure that you get the best rate is to shop several "A rated" carriers. Carriers will review the number of employees, how many employees work in each capacity in detail, wages, and total payroll. The area that will most affect your workers’ comp rating is the risk factor of each job; even the height at which the employee works. A warehouse that provides hazardous services may have such a high loss factor, that they may be required to get coverage though an assigned risk program, which are insurance companies that provide coverage specifically for high-risk companies that may experience high losses due to illness or injury. The carriers will want to see loss runs to review type and number of injuries over a period of time.

Many individual get involved in a claim. Not only are the buyers and providers involved, but also the managers, claims administrators, lawyers, physicians, managers, and human resources manager. The best method to avoid injury claims is to provide a safe work environment along with extensive training and reward programs to reduce risk. If all else fails though, workers’ compensation insurance will ensure that you do not lose your business because of an employee injury.

Sources
Vendorguru.com
vendorseek.com
allbusiness.com

Bonded Warehouses

With the advent of shipping, commodities are imported and exported universally. As products are moved from one location to another, the use of various modes of transportation has become essential. Just as an example, product is picked up from the factory by truck then transported by train or ship for the rest of the journey. As manufacturers move their goods, the retailer may not always need them immediately, or perhaps the retailer does not require the goods for their stores immediately. In this situation, the manufacturer must have a location to store their goods while waiting to ship the product to their customers.



Warehouses also provide a location for cross docking services. This means that a load in transport may need to drop off at one location to be picked up by another truck or service. A bonded warehouse helps with the transport of these commodities by providing a drop off location and delaying payment on taxes until transfer.


A bonded warehouse is a facility that is privately owned by a private firm or individuals that secure the goods are under customs supervision and needs to be moved out for consumption or re-exported. Duties on commodities that are unpaid are stored under bond, which is joint custody between the importer and customs officer. Goods liable to duty are kept at the warehouse until the taxes are paid. The benefits of using a bonded warehouse allows for storage of goods under bond are not taxed until transported out of the warehouse. So, unless the goods you deal with are produced in a free industrial zone, consider using a bonded warehouse to store your product.


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