Tracy Warren, ERP Consultant at Katalyst Software Services Limited, knows just what it takes to guide clients through their supply chain needs. As a seasoned industry expert, she’s used smart technology and even simple everyday items to solve some of the trickiest supply chain challenges. Learn more as Tracy shares her story on reimagining ERP with a Red Clothespin.
In the ’90s, I was involved in a massive ERP Project for a southern textile giant. Before being drafted onto the project, I had worked for them for about four years as a Regional Inventory Analyst. The company had 17 locations and almost as many systems.
The goal of the project? To bring all the sites into a suite of systems within five years. To my surprise, my manager nominated me onto the project team.
We spent about a year and a half planning and testing at the home office and preparing for the series of go-lives. We set up physical mock warehouses with little boxes, practiced with the RF equipment. We ran the systems through load testing and used what we knew of each warehouse’s processes to brainstorm solutions for every exception possible.
But, we all know that with every project, there will be some bumps along the road. At one site, I was asked to manage the project issue list. This task involved logging any newly reported issues, routing to the appropriate resource, and following through to closure. I worked closely with the project manager, who guided me in prioritizing and ranking the issues.
One day I was reviewing emails and received an issue report from someone on the operations team. They were asking for a system change and had provided excellent detail about the issue and the desired solution. This site worked on a productivity piece-rate, meaning they got paid more when their average number of cartons per hour increased. The complaint was that the picking department would stop for breaks when they reached the end of an order, or pallet, or some defined breaking point. But in the packing department, they did not know precisely when that would be since they were on different floors of the building. So, the packers often stood idle watching the conveyor wondering when the cartons are coming down. You have to remember this was in the ’90s and no cell phones or fancy technology were out on the warehouse floor other than the Warehouse Management System.
What the operations team had proposed was an elaborate process of sending a system alert through the WMS to the packers when the pickers were finished and headed to break. But their plan included installing WM system modifications to allow a picker to scan a barcode to indicate a break. The system would then send a message to a set of lights in the packing area to light up as a signal for the packers to take a break.
Pickers must scan a different barcode and reset the packing area light to indicate when they’ve returned from their break. It was a rather complex solution, back then, for the issue at hand. Even so, I added it to the list and did my best to prioritize it, but the list was long, and the project deadline was tight.
The project manager taught me a valuable lesson later that day. After a review of the issue and proposed solution, he brought in the client to discuss. They talked about a variety of alternatives and, surprisingly, in about 10 minutes, they agreed to opt for an entirely different solution: a red clothespin.
The picker who sent the last carton on the conveyor would clip a red clothespin to the box flap. When the packers see the box coming on the conveyor with the red clothespin, they know it’s time for a break. The clothespins cost us about $15.
After the client left the room, the Project Manager told me that sometimes you have to break projects down to the most straightforward solutions, especially on a project of this scale and a tight schedule. I had no idea going in how many challenges we’d face and how many fantastic success stories would come out of that time I spent on that project. But I think the thing that sticks with me now, 20+ years later, is the red clothespin.
It taught me to be considerate with project time and cautious about the client’s dollars. It also encouraged me to do my best to understand and guide my client through any underlying problems when an issue is reported. Sometimes it takes a more elegant solution and, wow, do we have those! But sometimes all it takes is a red clothespin.
Have a project in the pipeline in the coming months? Let a Katalyst WMS Expert like Tracy help you strategize.
