You have gone to great length to purchase the right machinery, you have a preventative maintenance plan in place, your operators are motivated and well trained, you are even maintaining a 5S culture complete with performance charts and KPIs, and you still cannot get product out of the door inside an acceptable lead time. What is going on?

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This is an ongoing battle in many manufacturing organisations with either side blaming the other for causing long lead times, excessive work in progress, bursting finished goods stores, long changeover times, raw material shortages or missing packaging materials.

‘The definition of Flexibility is the quality of bending without breaking, an ability to compromise or change, and an ability to be modified’. These simple definitions are the fundamentals of any warehouse. Despite this simple definition I would say the majority do the exact opposite. Is it just our nature as human beings to complicate everything or is it our attitude to the true definition of what a warehouse is and does.

Sometimes you get a piece of advice that makes so much sense that it sticks with you forever. 20 years ago WBS Group sought advice on how to find a good dentist and was told, “Look at the waiting room. If it is messy, walk away”. The inference was that the state of the waiting room reflected the clinical standards of the dental practice.