inbound

Have you taken inventory of your handheld devices and their batteries and come up short? That’s a more common occurrence than you might think.

“We generally find imbalances in warehouses,” says Larry Murray, CEO of battery maker Global Technology Systems Inc. “For example, if a warehouse is supposed to have 20 devices and 40 batteries, that’s never what we actually see.” The reason: Operators will go for the newest batteries—and hang onto them, sometimes stashing them in lockers, desk drawers, or work cabinets.

It may sound like something nefarious is going on, but in employees’ minds, they’re just doing the right thing—ensuring that old, poorly functioning, or inefficient equipment isn’t compromising their productivity. And indeed, Murray observes, the most productive employees are the ones most likely to do this. “People who want to be productive may hide good batteries because they get frustrated if they get a bad battery” that runs out or slows down early in a shift, he explains.

This problem is a particular concern when people are compensated based on their productivity. J.R. Rodrigues, the company’s vice president of marketing, cites the example of warehouse employees who received a daily bonus if they could handle truck deliveries within a specified number of minutes. They were hoarding the good scanner batteries, he says, because they could not afford to take the time to go get a replacement.

The solution is better management: keeping track of battery quality, capacity, and charge levels; testing and maintaining them properly; and having sufficient numbers of reliable batteries available at all times.

Hey, where’d that battery go?

Many modern warehouses are plagued by an ancient problem: vermin. Like the prehistoric farmers who struggled to keep hungry rats and mice out of their grain silos, some of today’s facilities are afflicted with the destructive pests. A rat infestation can be a serious headache, triggering the spread of germs, forcing owners to throw out tainted food, requiring expensive exterminators, and breaking food-storage regulations by the handful.

Now, pet shelters in Chicago and Spokane, Wash., are promoting an equally ancient solution to the problem: cats. About five years ago, Chicago’s Tree House Humane Society and Spokane’s SpokAnimal shelter launched projects to find their resident feral cats a home … and a job—in this case, patrolling a warehouse or DC. For a fee, the organizations will establish a colony of cats in converted dog crates equipped with litter boxes, scratching posts, and toys. The new caretaker agrees to provide food and veterinary care, and in return, the cats get to work.

The feline security guards work their new beat, catching or scaring off rats in every corner of the warehouse, blocking the spread of disease, protecting valuable inventory, and looking cute while they do it. One famous warehouse cat at Chicago’s Empirical Brewery warehouse even has his own Twitter account, head brewer Nevin McCown told CNN.

Yes, we’re sharing a couple of links to cat videos here: https://twitter. com/VenkmanTheCat and www.cnn.com/2016/07/15/health/cats-chicago-rat- patrol/.

Will work for mice (or rats)

The newsroom at DC VELOCITY is a fun place to earn a living, if you don’t mind a little hard work and the occasional long hours. We take pride in covering the changes and developments that are sweeping across the logistics, transportation, and distribution landscape.

The job is rewarding enough on its own, but by golly, it’s also nice to earn a shiny journalism prize now and then. This June, we were honored to take home four awards at the annual meeting of the New England Chapter of the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE).

Our editorial team was presented with the bronze regional award for “Regrets, recriminations, diversions: The legacy of bad times at West Coast ports,” a feature in our April 2015 issue by Executive Editor – News Mark Solomon. Solomon won another bronze award for “Now comes the hard part,” a February 2015 online news story about the challenges facing West Coast ports after the labor standoff was resolved.

We won a third bronze award for our “Newsworthy” section, a monthly compilation of news stories written by Solomon and Senior Editor Ben Ames. Our fourth award went to our sister publication, CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly. Editor Toby Gooley took home the bronze prize for her columns “The high cost of not caring” from the Q3 2015 issue and “As you rise, you must lift” from the Q4 2015 issue.