WAREHOUSING
specialreport
Certification pays
unexpected dividends
Companies that have undergone WERC’s warehouse certification
process say the benefits go well beyond bragging rights.
THOUGH NOT YET TWO YEARS OLD, THE
Warehousing Education and Research Council’s
(WERC) facility certification program has already
built a track record of providing benefits to the companies that take part. Participants say those benefits
can come in at least two forms: improvement in operations in preparation for certification, and validation
of existing capabilities and efficiencies by the certification itself.
The program was launched in late 2010 to
fill what WERC’s leadership saw as a
void in the industry. Kate
Vitasek, co-founder of the
consultancy Supply Chain
Visions and one of the
architects of the program,
says the idea was to create
a standard against which
warehouse managers
could measure their facilities’ performance. “We’ve
been doing benchmarking for
several years, and I’ve been in over
300 warehouses,” she says. “It is always
sad to see companies that think they are much
better than they are.” She adds that she has literally
seen warehouses that use sticky notes for labeling
racks and write numbers on boxes for cycle counts.
The program, which is open to third-party logistics
service providers (3PLs) as well as “first-party” private
warehouses, also provides a means of independent
verification of a facility’s capabilities. Vitasek sees that
as a major benefit for shippers who use contract ware-
house services. Certification will assure those cus-
tomers that a 3PL meets minimum standards, she
explains, adding that she hopes that someday, third
parties will be required to be certified before they’re
even allowed to submit an RFP.
GETTING CERTIFIED
To earn certification in the voluntary program, a facility must undergo an inspection and assessment of its
processes by an independent auditor. The
auditor grades the operation against
the standards outlined in WERC’s
Warehousing Fulfillment
Process Benchmark and Best
Practices Guide. The assessment covers eight standard warehousing
processes: receiving and
inspection, material handling, slotting, storage and
inventory control, warehouse
management systems, shipping
documentation, picking and packing, and consolidation and shipping.
The auditor assigns scores to each activity
based on a five-point scale—poor practice, inadequate
practice, common practice, good practice, and best
practice.
Steve Murray of Supply Chain Visions designed the
program under the guidance of Vitasek and Michael
Mikitka, WERC’s chief executive officer. Murray now
conducts the audits for WERC and has completed
more than 20, including assessments of facilities run
