Lesson 3: Reading an Operation | Slides | Material Handling Academy

MATERIAL HANDLING ACADEMY

Part I. Lesson 3. Reading an Operation.

DRIVING QUESTION What is this operation telling me before anyone speaks?

PART I | LESSON 3: READING AN OPERATION

The Room Reads You Back

Tom led with money. Whatever you design has to pencil out or it never gets built.
Ray isn't sure why he's in the room. The systems side has been an afterthought here.
Dana used one word you should have flinched at: manually.
Michael said nothing until you made eye contact, then told you two systems have already died on this floor.

PART I | LESSON 3: READING AN OPERATION

The Facility Walk

What Michael reads first: the manual processes, and how many people each one takes. That's where the labor cost concentrates.

Riverside facility plan view: Zone A mezzanine pick and Zone B ground-floor pick across the north half, a main forklift aisle running east to west through the middle with a crossing-hazard marker, a staging area bottleneck below it, and three dock doors on the south wall for carriers A, B, and overflow at 55, 35, and 10 percent of volume. — The pick zones are calm. The pain concentrates above the dock.

PART I | LESSON 3: READING AN OPERATION

Reading Dead Automation

Start by looking, not asking. Is it running, or worked around? An abandoned system isn't a lazy operation. It's a customer who tried something and went back to doing it by hand. Ask five questions about what's already there.

What does the system do well? What parts of it do the operators actually rely on and trust?
What does it not do well? Where does it slow you down or force a manual workaround?
Has it ever been down for an extended stretch? How did you keep shipping while it was?
Is it tied into your WMS or ERP, and how well does that connection actually work?
If you could change one thing about it, what would it be?

Then the one that matters most: would you install the same system again if you were starting fresh today?

PART I | LESSON 3: READING AN OPERATION

Every Warehouse Has a Personality

Clean and well maintained tells you the customer will maintain what you design for them.
Chaotic tells you the opposite: what you leave behind has to be simpler than whatever they run now.
Riverside is split. Calm pick zones, chaotic sort, and the chaos sits on the exact task Dana wants fixed.

DESIGN PRINCIPLE Design for the maintenance crew you actually have.

PART I | LESSON 3: READING AN OPERATION

Operators vs Managers

THE MANAGER GIVES YOU

The designed process. The way it works on a good day.

THE OPERATOR GIVES YOU

The real one. What happens during a wave release when two zones pull at once and there's no time to scan.

They rarely match. The gap between them is usually where your project lives.

PART I | LESSON 3: READING AN OPERATION

THINK LIKE THE OPERATOR

You already learned to think like the package. Now add the person. Somewhere inside the system you design, at two in the morning on the worst night of the year, one associate is standing in front of a jam with a truck waiting at the dock. Can that one person clear it alone, or does your elegant design need two people and a call to a vendor who won't answer? Michael's one maintenance guy is who you're really designing for. If he can't keep it running, it doesn't matter how well it ran on paper.

PART I | LESSON 3: READING AN OPERATION

Reading Existing Automation: The Three W's

WHYExisting automation is the customer's real track record. It shows you what they already bought into, what they believe, and what actually held up on their floor.

WHENAny time a system is already in place. The first three questions are always: is it used, is it maintained, and does everyone who should use it actually use it.

WHEREOn the facility walk. What you learn here shapes the interfaces in your requirements and the technology you end up recommending.

NOT WHENDon't read it as a spec sheet to inventory. You're reading the relationship, not the equipment list. The dust and the workarounds are the data.

FAILURE IF IGNOREDYou pitch new automation to a customer sitting three feet from a system they abandoned, without ever asking why it died. You just told them you didn't look.

PART I | LESSON 3: READING AN OPERATION

STOP AND THINK

Two associates are moving as fast as they can, a carton is sitting in the wrong lane, and neither of them has caught it. Before you read another word, write down what that one carton tells you. Not what to do about it. What it tells you about the operation, right now, before anyone has quoted a single machine.

PART I | LESSON 3: READING AN OPERATION

Riverside: Facility Readout

RIVERSIDE PROJECT

Start the facility readout page in your Riverside note. Write what this operation is telling you and what it has already told you it won't tolerate. Date it, and keep it where you can find it. Every decision you make later answers back to this page.

Next: What problem am I actually trying to solve?