specialreport
BY KARL MANRODT, JOSEPH TILLMAN, AND KATE VITASEK
a bright side
to dark times
Even in the trough of a
recession, distribution
center and warehousing
professionals continued to
raise the bar on operating
performance last year.
THE GOOD NEWS MAY BE THAT THERE IS NO NEWS. OUR SEVENTH ANNUAL
survey of key distribution center and warehousing metrics continues to show slow
but steady improvement in operational performance. What makes that remarkable,
though, is that the gains took place in the midst of the worst recession in memory.
As for how this year’s findings stacked up against last year’s, the latest survey found
that companies either maintained or improved their performance against 35 of the
50 metrics studied (we used median performance numbers as the basis of comparison). And some of those gains were impressive indeed—the median numbers for several of the metrics tracked showed double-digit improvements in performance over
the previous year.
But the picture that emerged wasn’t entirely rosy. With other metrics—
particularly those relating to employment and inventory—there were signs that the recession
had taken a toll. Yet even in those cases, the trend lines provided cause for optimism.
The study, conducted among DC VELOCITY’S readers and members of the
Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC), was carried out via an
online questionnaire in early January 2010. A total of 639 individuals responded to
the survey, of which 559 provided usable responses. Respondents were asked what
metrics they used and how well their facilities performed in 2009.
The goal of the research, now in its seventh year, is to track which metrics are most
important to DC and warehousing professionals and to shed some light on underly-
