The Holiday Dilemma

This question comes up every year during the holiday season. How do you go about celebrating the holiday while keeping the terminology politically correct? Each individual has his or her own way of celebrating their spirituality, so things can get sticky when a specific terminology is used to celebrate time away or at work, such as Christmas Party verses Holiday Party. Laborers may become quite offended if you call a celebration a Christmas party, but the laborer is not Christian. It is not unusual for managers within an organization to find themselves in an uncomfortable situation or lawsuit over terminology used innocuously.

The assumption is that if an organization is privately owned, that it does not matter what terminology is used. Unfortunately, even though the sentiment is kindly meant, individuals may find this to be offensive. The general rule is to keep terminology general and open the festivities up to other denominations. For instance, if Christmas is celebrated within your organization, consider asking if workers have an interest in celebrating Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, or Bodhi Day.

Keep in mind, holidays are not a right and are given to employees as a benefit, so it is not necessary to give everyone time off every time a holiday comes around. However, if you provide holiday pay for celebrating Christmas is may be wise to offer the same benefit to individuals that celebrate other ethnic or religious holidays instead of Christmas.

This is not an easy situation to resolve. If you encounter an issue at work, then an open mind and understanding is an essential attribute to have. Look at alternative for individuals that do not celebrate the same holidays as you and speak with a human resources consultant or attorney to help you make decisions that affect employment policies.

Pick and Pass

The concept of pick and pass also known as split case picking helps complete pick orders. The warehouse pick and pass methods is particularly helpful when labor is at a premium. A conveyor is essential in order to set up multiple packing zones.

The picking and packing process always starts at zone one. Each bin has a required list of items added in the kitting process or multiple orders. As the box or bin passes a worker, the individual adds the item listed. If that zone does not possess the items required, then it moves to the next station until all items have been included. Like most processes, the pick and pass method can use the paper and checklist utilize voice software. The software used must be flexible enough to configure the picking process to accommodate several pick and pack orders.
I found this method useful, but the most difficult to explain clearly. Conveying (no pun intended) this concept took a bit of work for me, so I researched the concept and found an article from Logistics News that was easy to read and explains this idea fairly clearly.

Building a Green Warehouse

We leave a carbon foot print in everything we do, eat, and utilize. Although, progress is considered a good thing, too much of a good thing can be bad for you. Society is much more aware of how the earth and its resources are used and abused. With this added awareness, it is essential that organizations realize that they need to be perceived as socially consciences.

Sustainable building is becoming the rage. Old buildings are often retrofitted and new buildings tend to reflect alternative methods during construction to save energy in a variety of ways. From top to bottom, there is opportunity to use sustainable methods within the development of the building such as using low-pressure toilets and waterless urinals. Other methods involve upgrading insulation, using recycled materials, the use of skylights, solar panels, and motion detector light sensors to eliminate energy waste. Installing energy efficient windows and using floor based air conditioning and heating units help save power and money once the warehouse is in operation. Installing a geothermal energy system is efficient and better for the environment. During the build out, consider using building materials from the local area rather than shipping from abroad and recycle as much construction waste as possible. This only scratches the surface of how you can accomplish a goal of building a green warehouse.

Granted, the initial expense of building a sustainable warehouse tends to be approximately 2% more that the average cost of construction, but over the next twenty years, on average, you can save up to ten times the cost of energy alone.

Flextime

Employees want more benefits, but as an employer, you are plagued by the high cost that additional benefits may add to the already increasing cost of healthcare benefits. So what can you do? Sometimes you do not have to spend additional funds to make employees feel content within their occupations. You may want to consider offering an alternative to the nine to five workweeks. Whether man or woman, many laborers have family and children with which to contend and having the flexibility to work around handling family matters can be just as important or more so to an employee than money.

An individual that needs to take care of an ailing family member, elderly parent, or children that are still in school, who have the flexibility in their work life to handle family matters can typically concentrate better on work if they are not worrying about taking care of matters at home.

Flextime can come in a variety of forms such as ten hour day, four days a week, split shifts where the employee can work morning and evening, but are able to be home in the afternoons to care for their children. Another method includes splitting a shift with another worker that needs to work afternoons while the other has a need to work mornings. Laborers often find that the flexibility in the workday has the equivalent or more value than money.

If this is an option that you may want to consider but do not know if it of importance to your work force, consider taking a survey to determine the validity of whether or not this is a value within your organization. Your Human Resources department can be of great help in helping you to determine the feasibility of such a program.

The Importance of Professionalism

Professionalism seems to be lacking by employees in all levels of organizations. Whether working in a financial industry such as banking or within a third party logistics company, standards of professionalism vary, but all should have a certain level. According to the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, the definition of Professional is “exhibiting a courteous, conscientious, and generally businesslike manner in the work place.”

Unfortunately, professionalism seems to have gone the way of the horse and carriage. Whether working in a warehouse facility picking and packing or middle and upper management, professionalism should be expected from each individual within your organization. Professionalism is simply the use of manners when dealing with co-workers, customers, and vendors. Actions such as not interrupting or correcting colleagues, rummaging or taking items from an associate’s work area, knocking before entering an office, minding your “P’s and Q’s”, or maintaining an excellent sense of integrity.

Employees come from a variety of familial and cultural backgrounds, so may be unaware of the standards of professionalism within your company. It is up to management within the company to expect and enforce a certain standard of behavior in courtesy and should be expected and enforced. It is possible to learn or change certain behavior, so if you have issues within your organization consider creating a workshop to assist employees with this concept. Your human resources department may be a good area with which to begin.

Foam-in Place

Styrofoam packaging that breaks easily, peanut packaging that end up all over the place, and bubble wrap that works well but requires a lot to fill a box work well but are not always ideal to protect the product departing from the warehouse and ship across the nation or world. An alternative method of warehouse packing is foam-in place protective packaging.

The foam-in place is a cushioning method that filled voids in packages to protect items in transit. The polyurethane foam is in liquid form that expands up to 200% of its original size and solidifies.

One method of the foam-in place method includes the following steps.
· Line the box with a strong film suited for the process
· Using a hand held dispenser with the use of a compression air system, spray the liquid
· The liquid expands
· Fold over the film, then place the product firmly in place
· Place lining over the items
· Spray foam and fold sheet over
The foam expands to fill space around the product to keep expensive and/or delicate items in place, in order to prevent damage during transit.

A similar method includes pre-packaged liquid foam that expands once activated by rubbing or pressing. Place the pack in the box, press the product in, and then repeat the process again.

There are various manufacturers and systems and the method you choose depend upon size and volume.

Intermodelism

It was only sixty years ago that inter-modalism was just a concept. Cargo moving internationally traveled inefficiently and took far longer than it does today to arrive to its destination. The movement of goods was slow, unorganized, and goods typically sat until the next step on the route was scheduled. The transfer of cargo from ship to dock to train to truck to warehouse to truck and finally to its final destination was at best inefficient. Logistics has come far with a world-wide intermodal network that makes use of water, air, and land in the most efficient and cost-effective way.

The movement of containerized goods transferred internationally has become seamless. The transport of thousands of cases, boxes, raw goods, even produce has become an integrated system of transportation networks. This concept of inter-related transport has even led to new logistics terminology such as load centers, which is the port that cargo is off loaded, and LOLO, which means the lifting on and lifting off of cargo via the use of cranes to load and unload cargo.

Logistics management involves strong organizational skills, project management skills, training, negotiations ability, appropriate software, excellent computer skills, and a great deal of strategic planning.

Warehouses Be Aware of Company Branding

Brand management is an effective marketing tool that helps companies increases the perceived value of their products. A company’s trademark helps increase its competitive edge. Customers buy products that he or she trust and believe provides them with the best value.

Warehouses provide services such as packaging for clients that fit within the needs of the manufacturer and client. Secure packaging is important, but just as essential to your success is maintaining the company’s brand management on all packages that leave the manufacturer’s docking areas. You should consider hiring a third party distributer that provides a packaging and distribution service all the while being careful to be awareness of the client’s branding standards.

Package branding must encompass the internal packaging and forms as well as outer labels on that are immediately apparent on the box. Inconsistent branding can lead to confusion and detract from the product and company’s value.

Branding also includes the quality of the product as well as the outside container. A third party Logistics Company that produces inferior product for the company will inevitably ruin a company’s brand. Important to the success of your organization is consistent oversight of the manufacturing and packaging process.