

	Sedlak associate: "Recently a client had to make a presentation to his superiors about updated changes his team decided to make to the original design. I talked him through the entire project including, of course, the design changes. The next day his email said, 'My superiors were very impressed. Thanks for making me look good.'

	"The first thing that comes to mind with Sedlak is focus. They keep you, your company and everybody involved with the project focused on what it is you're trying to do and when things need to be done. They will keep you focused. They will make you make the decisions that have to be made and do everything they can to keep the project moving ahead. They have done this so many times that they know all the red flags that potentially cause a project to get delayed or stalled. They know how to keep your schedule on track. they did the same thing for us. They let us know what was happening and if we didn't meet certain deadlines, how other things on the schedule would be impacted. They were very good at keeping the project rolling." Dave Abeloe Distribution Center Director Patagonia, Inc.

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DC Optimization Services

It happens all the time. Companies call to tell us that they’re reaching capacity or their distribution/fulfillment facility no longer suits their needs, but they don’t have the capital to move or expand. “Can you please help us squeeze some life out of the facility we’re in?” Or, “We don’t have time to move prior to peak season, but we know we can’t make it with our current operations”.

Then, we have the rare client who calls before it’s a real issue. They service their distribution operations regularly, tweaking whatever needs to be tweaked in response to subtle and continuous business changes or in response to new opportunities available through new technologies. (It’s not that we love these clients any more than the former, but their projects certainly are a little less stressful.)

How Sedlak helps…

Every situation is unique, but we typically help clients optimize operations by starting with an assessment. We begin with an on-site review of the current situation in which we tour the operation and interview key personnel. From the information gathered in this step, we can easily identify several improvements with substantial “bang for the buck” that we’ll share right away.

We’ll take the rest of the information back to our offices and develop a report of the key challenges, investigate potential solutions, then develop a report of the findings. This is a short-term project that results in a laundry list of improvement ideas, each with rough budget costs, estimated impact on the operation and expected ease of implementation.

So many of our optimization assessments result in the following advice, that we’ll give it to you for free:

Labor performance. The labor management systems available now can bring great results. We’re all for them for the client who has the means. If your company is not so lucky, there are some great ways to improve performance results in less sophisticated ways, such as working with your employees to develop standard operating procedures.
Offer routine training programs. Refreshers for existing employees. Basic training for new-hires and cross training. Shadowing an existing employee for an hour then cutting them loose, simply doesn’t give the new guys the best chance for success in the operation.
Ergonomics. OK, here, we engineers have to get off the high horse a little. We’re notorious for prioritizing cube utilization over operator accessibility (they can stand on this stool, can’t they?) and designing carts that would be perfect for us if we were picking and packing product. But when your average employee is 5’0” tall… Fortunately, the solutions tend to be relatively inexpensive whether it’s adjusting the height of a table or buying a new cart or, in the case of the high shelves, re-slot the slowest moving SKUs to those locations.
Slotting. Very few companies do this right. There are some great programs available for constant SKU/location assignment optimization. If you’re not ready to invest in one of these programs, a good old fashioned Excel spreadsheet with some sales data can give you some great results – be sure to include product cube in your analysis. We’ll be happy to work with you on the first attempt.
Save steps and reduce touches. Can you stock the pick location from receiving? Can a report or process be tweaked to more closely match the needs of the operation? What about interleaving putaway and picking tasks so you’re not traveling through the DC with an empty fork, pallet or cart?
Lighting. People need good lighting to effectively do their jobs. With all of the great energy efficient options for bright lights in the big DC, there’s really no excuse for keeping employees in the dark.

In addition to the common problems listed above, we’ll be looking for opportunities to better utilize your space or more efficiently set up your DC. We may recommend equipment investments, material handling layout changes, information systems changes, or outsourcing certain operations. We’ll look for potential cost savings in the areas of labor, utilities, transportation and inventory. We pride ourselves on giving sound and practical advice. We don’t recommend change for the sake of change. We do take advantage of technologies that make sense for your operation.

To conclude the assessment project, we like to work with you to choose the top priority improvements and create an actionable plan for going forward. We don’t want to leave you high and dry with great ideas and no idea how to execute. We’ll determine which opportunities can be handled in house and which require a proposal or referral from Sedlak.

To schedule an operations assessment discussion and learn how Sedlak might be able to help you, use the Contact Us form or reach out to Dan Klenkar at 216.206.4731 or dklenkar@jasedlak.com