The client was in a transitional phase on the sales and delivery side of the go-to-market process focusing more on customer specific pallet building to simplify deliveries and improve customer service. The client needed to know how this strategic shift would affect the warehousing activities. IET was asked to measure the impact through times studies and also provide the next level analysis to identify solutions to minimize productivity losses and standardize the solutions.

IET developed customized software on tablets to conduct the time studies. The time studies were designed to be continuous and the observations were taken in 8 hour shifts for a single operator so that work sampling type analysis (daily activities by % of day) could also be performed. IET engineers conducted approximately 75 continuous time studies in 14 cities across the United States during a 9 week period. This included production facilities and satellite warehouses.

The time study strategy also included “before and after” studies for select sites that were transitioning to the new pallet building strategy. This gave the client direct correlation of cause and effect of the changes. Along with this data, IET provided statistically supported improvement solutions to negate decreased efficiency.

A significant bi-product of the time study effort is that IET created a standards model for building pallets. The model considered facility attributes and process variables including factors such as facility size, sales volume, material handling equipment, and work methods to calculate an accurate engineered standard for productivity. This model could be used in any of their 300+ warehouses across the United States for accurate standards to monitor performance and feedback metrics.

With hundreds of hours of direct observation and measurement of the warehouse methods, IET developed and presented a final report summarizing all data and created a list of top priority items.