BY PETER BRADLEY, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
LMS
technologyreview
Genco’s operation on behalf of a major customer already
ran well. But linking labor management and lift truck
management systems yielded further improvements.
IN THE MINDSET OF A COMPANY FOCUSED ON CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT,
hitting all the marks is just the beginning. The persistent question always remains: How can
we get better?
Genco, a major third-party logistics service provider, operates a 410,000-square-foot dis-
tribution center for document management giant Xerox in Groveport, Ohio. Even before
launching an effort to improve operations, Genco was meeting its client’s expectations. “The
facility was performing very well,” says Marek Jezior, who works in Genco’s Lean Solutions
Group. “But we wanted to see what else we could do to impact performance.”
Specifically, he says, Genco was looking for ways to improve efficiency and take
out cost—“anything that would bring value to the company and the customer.”
The company decided early on to focus its efforts on its lift truck fleet. What
ultimately brought substantial savings and improvements in productivity (not
to mention safety) was linking lift truck management and labor management
software. Historically, labor management systems (LMS) have not covered lift
truck movements; they monitor workers using time-stamps, which are creat-
ed whenever a worker scans a bar code. Genco and its software partners
extended the concept of labor management from order selectors to the forklift
drivers. Because it has more visibility into lift truck operations, Genco now can
better manage its lift truck driver work force.
The effort began with a close look at lift truck fleet management—an area
where Genco felt its management systems were falling short. “One thing missing
in our management was detailed information for the optimization of our material handling equipment,” Jezior says. “We are in the business of moving materials for our customers. That’s how we get compensated. And we had absolutely
no way of measuring the activity and efficiency of our forklift drivers or the utilization of the equipment. We were interested in moving more material and reducing the cost
of ownership.” After consulting with Bob Simon, director of process solutions for Genco, Jezior
set the twin goals of improving operating efficiency and operational safety.
The most obvious choice for a partner in developing better information on the fleet was The
Raymond Corp.: All 26 pieces of lift truck equipment in the facility were Raymond trucks. And
Raymond also brought to the table its i Warehouse fleet management system, a fleet optimization solution designed to manage driver access to vehicles, ensure compliance with record-keep-ing rules, record and alert managers when impacts occur, and track operational performance.
But the decision to go with i Warehouse wasn’t a slam dunk. Jezior says Genco selected the
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Linking tools to lift
labor productivity
