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in a digital world, tend to embrace the
concept, experts say.
“As opposed to saying ‘The LMS can
track everything; Big Brother’s watching,’
the new workers we’re hiring are used to
new technologies,” Allen says. “It encour-
ages their competitive nature. People like
to hear feedback—both qualitative and
quantitative. It helps them understand
how they’re contributing to the whole
organization.”
That transparency has been helpful both
in recruiting new warehouse employees
and in retaining existing workers, experts
say. That is especially important in an
increasingly tight labor market, where
warehouses must compete with industries
like construction and plumbing for help.
“One of the shifts we’re seeing in the
work force is that millennials want to
know they’re in an organization they have
a future with,” Allen says. Not only are
they eager for tips and advice, he says, but
they also want a career path set out for
them that they can expect to follow if they
continue to perform well.
4To rev up fulfillment operations in small DCs and retail stores. Many LMS providers promise that the
software can deliver a 10- to 30-per-
cent improvement in worker efficiency.
A boost of that magnitude makes it easy
to justify the software’s cost, since those
efficiencies add up fast in a warehouse
with several hundred workers.
Calculating the return on investment
(ROI) gets much harder for smaller facilities with just a few dozen workers, however. So in recent years, some users have
begun using a simplified version, sometimes called “LMS light,” in small fulfillment centers and even retail stores.
With a smaller price tag, these versions
usually forgo certain features of a full-blown LMS, such as employee coaching,
customized goals, and interoperability
with the warehouse management system
(WMS). But a scaled-back version of an
LMS with a simple dashboard can still
deliver performance gains of nearly 10
percent, proponents say.
“If you look at a large home improve-
ment store or sporting goods retailer,
the store is basically a warehouse with
customers in it some of the time,” says
Intelligrated’s Franklin. “But in the store
environment, we have no idea how long
it should take to receive and scan items,
or do break-out and put-away by aisle,”
he says. “So how can we hold individuals
accountable?”
One answer is to use a stripped-down
LMS system to develop a baseline for time
needed to perform various tasks.
This approach can be especially valuable
in the age of omnichannel fulfillment, as
stores struggle to master new tasks like
filling e-commerce orders from retail
shelves or meeting deadlines for buy-online-pick-up-in-store orders, Franklin
says. Using an LMS to, say, batch orders
so that an employee can retrieve three
items at once instead of making three
trips can help stores run more efficiently.
5To generate data for high-level deci- sion-making. Another way compa- nies are wringing extra value from
an LMS is to leverage the data it generates
for corporate-level scenario modeling
and strategic decision-making.
By applying business analytics tools to
LMS-generated data on receiving, put-away, picking, value-added services, and
shipping, users can calculate the best way
to respond to market shifts like variations
in seasonal demand, the introduction of
new product lines, or a changeover from
pallet picking to piece picking.
Managers can also use LMS-generated
data in activity-based costing, a method of
estimating the cost of completing a job by
adding up the costs of all of its constituent
activities, says HighJump’s Kuerschner.
That can be crucial when a DC is trying to
decide whether it would be profitable to
bring on a new customer who demands
complex kitting or assembly tasks, instead
of just basic loading and shipping.
Taken together, these five creative
applications of a standard labor management platform are helping DC managers
find solutions to 21st century logistics
challenges. Whether an operation is looking to adapt its operations to meet the
demands of omnichannel order fulfillment or the changing demographics of
the next-generation labor force, the humble LMS may hold the answer.
