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Developing a Warehouse Construction Schedule for your project

Blog 9
In major material handling or storage equipment jobs at your facility, there must be a detailed schedule. When is the schedule completed? Once you have a thorough activity duration plan completed with a flow chart of activities. So what exactly is included in the schedule? It’s often overlooked what details should be included to avoid conflict, issues, delays, and negative risks. Are you implementing a major software program throughout your facility? Are you moving to a new warehouse? Is your operations expanding internationally? Perhaps you’re evaluating a brand new storage solution with pallet racking, shelving, or horizontal shuttles. These projects (not simply orders) should have in place a detailed schedule. The project data that you’ve accumulated during planning activities, such as leads, lags, and other information, will be part of the schedule detail.

TOP 10 list of what is required to develop a Warehouse Construction Schedule 

Construction worker planning warehouse construction schedule
Let’s summarize a top 10 list of what is required to develop a finalized schedule that your team, suppliers, management and others buy-into.
  1. First work with priorities of the major stakeholders. When does management need to be operating? Do you have customers expecting goods based on the project? What about staff – will they be trained and ready to operate with the end result if any?
  2. Evaluate other options to complete the work. Perhaps there are more economical ways to complete the project? Or, there are far better scheduling opportunities with the project.
  3. What are the impacts of this material handling or storage project on other organizational projects? Is it a dependancy? Is it a competing project out of the capital budget? Visualize where this project stands form the company point of view.
  4. Negotiate extra resources from other departments if required. Material handling generally seems to only deal with warehouse staff, right? What about the accounting team that will be budgeting for payments. Consider the sales team who depend on moving product from the warehouse. Is customer service prepared to explain potential delays? Are they expected to spread awareness of your warehouse move? Negotiate the necessary resources to bring transparency and a solid team effort in implementing the project.
  5. Consider all possible leads and lags of the project. Which activities allow for delay without delaying the entire project? Use this information to use as concessions if resources are needed elsewhere throughout the organization. Use these ares to tackle risks more effectively. Do not include “buffers”, as that is not an effective way to deal with risk. Rather use this time to prepare risk responses if applicable to your project.
  6. If your schedule needs crashing, do it now. Crash resources in certain areas where needed to complete the necessary activities in the schedule. Fast-track the activities that show a high chance success rate of saving time.
  7. Simulate the schedule with software programs to judge how the project will flow, and if it will be completed on time. This is probably a step for major projects involving warehouse moves, facility design, expansions, etc.
  8. Get buy-in from your stakeholders. If you’re the warehouse manager, how does the operations and senior management team feel about the project? If you’re relaying on a supplier such as RACKsteel to handle this portion of the project management, ensure you’ve identified all the correct stakeholders in your meetings. That way, we could present effective conversations with all levels of your operation to gain formal approval of the schedule.
  9. Do not only get buy-in from the senior management. What about the team that will be using the product or end result? What are their views? You may come across team members resistance to change, experience turnover, or underestimate the impact of the project on stakeholders not considered decision makers. Gain approval from all levels.
Implement the schedule and measure performance. Is a change request necessary? Identify all options before making a change request.
 
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Qualities Of A Good Warehouse Manager

How do you keep your warehouse clean? Taking pride in the operation. But, if you truly want a clean, effective warehouse, your staff need to take as much pride in what they do as you. We’ll look at how to motive staff to be as passionate and eager to do their best work under your supervision. What makes a great warehouse leader?

It’s not news these days, but we’ll repeat the many articles on effective management: Ensure there is an open exchange of ideas and promote frequent discussion with your team. Why? Empower them to be part of the decision making process. Empower them to be creative when dealing with operational challenges.

Here we look at nine critical attributes of warehouse management to attract, motivate, and retain people (Akerman, 2000):

Managers visit warehouse

Top 9 attributes of an effective warehouse manager

Communication skills

Not only give direction, but receive and encode the message properly. What is your staff telling you? And, are they receiving your messages correctly? Avoid wasted effort by improving your communication skills.

Delegate staff effectively

This is a difficult skill to own. You may see a fine line between being a “boss” and a “leader” in the way you communicate task delegation. Once you master delegation, make sure not to oversee the task too closely. Also, ensure the staff know it’s their responsibility. Ensure the team know you’ll be giving feedback and a performance review in a collaborative manner.

Motivational attributes

Each person is different. Each team member will have different needs, whether it be recognition and performance feedback frequency. Look at the company culture. What is the attitude like among the team? Getting the culture right will make motivating the staff much, much easier.

Problem-solving attributes

It’s far easier seeing warehouse workers standing around, waiting for something to do, or taking an extra long break all too often. It’s more difficult to see and recognize problems in system issues, bad data, and bad processes. It’s easy to say “It’s the way we do it”, but far harder to recognize a problem, identify solutions, and bringing the warehouse team on board to implement the change.

Flexibility

The management team needs to be flexible in today’s fast moving warehouse environment. They need to react quickly to urgent requests, and look at these requests as opportunities rather then negative hassles of the normal work day. People under you will see your passion and confidence, and the flexibility you demonstrate when dealing with unexpected issues will be an example for them to follow.

Company process knowledge

Be an expert in your company processes. Be an expert on the software you’re using. Have a complete understanding of the company policies. This is valuable when training new staff. Ensure they get off to the right foot with the organizational structure. Take time to understand what inside sales has to deal with when submitting an order to the warehouse. What are the outside reps doing first to get the deal to the customer service team? What are the customer expectations? Thee external processes will help shape their understanding of why you have internal policies implemented.

Ability to train others

Supervisors need to pass on their knowledge to other staff. Nothing is secret within your organization. It ensures continuity within the organization and a foundation for building operational leaders of the future. Well-trained staff are far more likely to stay with an organization.

Customer oriented

Not only do sales staff have to be customer oriented, but the entire operation. Understand the expectations and customer requirements. Ensure you achieve customer satisfaction within the boundaries of your business. What are the trade-off’s to meeting all customer requirements (i.e. what costs are involved for same-day delivery if required, or what is the risk when shipping free samples for clients to test?).

Teamwork skills

Do not be boss. Be a leader by setting out the goals of the organization for everyone to see and be part of. How is your staff going to contribute to the goals of the company? Teamwork skills capture several capabilities, like working in groups, coping under pressure, ability to cooperate, ability to influence, ability to negotiate and compromise, and of course, ability to make decisions.

In conclusion – It’s vital for warehouse management to be well equipped with the above attributes. They often are the middlemen between staff and senior management.