• Read Lean Warehousing Chapters 1 and 2.
• Answer Questions relating to the chapters.

Your bread and butter as a logistician will be finding ways to save money through better processes. The main place to do that is inside the warehouse. This book is a great place to start.

What is Lean?

Not to be confused with a drink popular in Hip Hop Culture, lean is a methodology originally created by Toyota to eliminate waste and inefficiency in its manufacturing operations. Per The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME):

The goal of lean is to eliminate wastethe non-value-added components in any process. Unless a process has gone through lean multiple times, it contains some element of waste. When done correctly, lean can create huge improvements in efficiency, cycle time, productivity, material costs, and scrap, leading to lower costs and improved competitiveness. And remember, lean isnt restricted to manufacturing. It can improve how a team works together, inventory management, and even client interaction.

Think of a manufacturing process where an individual spends an entire shift replicating the same process over and over. They bend down and pull a part out of a machine, turn around, walk a 10-12 steps, bend over to place the part in a bin, then walk back to the machine to grab the next part. There is waste in the process. Why does the person have to bend, turn, walk.all things that take time. Why is there even a person at all?

Eliminating that waste is what lean is all about. And its the key to your success as a logistician.

Homework #2: Read Lean Warehousing Chapters 1 and 2.

Submit a Word document in Blackboard answering the below questions. This does not have to be in a paper format. All answers must be in your own words, do NOT copy/paste please.

Chapter 1:

1. Eight Kinds of Waste: Take a look at your job, your house, and/or some other aspect of your life, and find examples of each kind of waste in your personal life.

For example: 1. Overproduction I dont drink very much pop/soda, and the one I like I can only get in cans by the case. So I always have a wasted space in my pantry with cans of soda that may sit there for a year or more.

1. Overproduction:
2. Waiting:
3. Unnecessary Movement:
4. Over-checking (or Over-processing):
5. Poor Inventory Control:
6. Unproductive Movement:
7. Errors in shipping/receiving/defective parts:
8. Unused creativity (or personal skills):

2. Pull Replaces Push: A push model is where the manufacturer decides what to produce by guessing what the customer wants. This limits available options available to consumers. Pre-internet, people only could choose from what was at their local stores.

A pull model is where a manufacturer will delay manufacturing and/or distribution until there is a request from a customer. How has the internet given customers more power, and forced companies to develop more of a pull model?

Chapter 2:

1. Space and Time. On the bottom of page 31 it says: the essence of warehousing is the effective management of space and time. What does this statement mean?

2. Consider the Five Ss: Sortation, Straightening, Shining, Standardization, and Sustaining. Each of the five statements below is an example of ONE of the Ss. Which S belongs to which statement?

3. 1. The Warehouse Operations Manager spent a week asking employees why no one ever cleans. Quite often they hear Because we cant find the brooms and dust pans. So they install blue peg boards at the end of each aisle where all the cleaning supplies hang. Each board has the aisle number in big numbers at the top. There is a white outline around each tool, so its easy to know where everything goes. Each tool has the aisle number on it as well, so everyone knows where each tools should go when its not in use. This is an example of ____________________

4. 2. A warehouse has ten different sizes of boxes that are used for shipping. Some boxes are used more than others. The WH Manger realizes that the employees have to walk past all the rarely used boxes to get to the daily-use boxes when they run out. So she moves the rarely used boxes to the back of the warehouse and put the daily-use ones out front.

This is an example of ____________________

5. 3. A fulfilment center has 50 packing stations that all are set up by the using employee, so all are different. Each employee spends 10-15 minutes at the beginning of each shift setting up their randomly assigned station the way they like it. The outbound manager develops one procedure for all the stations and asks everyone on all three shifts to follow the same procedure. This is an example of ____________________

6. 4. The Outbound Supervisor is tired of seeing the departments four forklifts not parked properly at the end of the shift. The four drivers swear they park theirs properly. Since they are not assigned, he can never check. So he labels each one (1 through 4) and paints a parking spot on the floor for each one. He then assigns the drivers to specific forklifts. Now he can quickly check who parked properly at the end of the day. This is an example of ____________________

7. 5. The Director of Supply Chain Management walks through their Fulfillment Center at least once a day at random times to see if all cleaning supplies are properly placed if not in use, that the packing stations stay set up the same way through the day, and that all the material handling equipment is parked properly. This is an example of ____________________