The Warehouse Continuous Improvement Plan

Business’s need to continuously improve if they want to stay in the game, maintain and gain their competitive advantage and achieve long-term success. Even though most of us are aware of how important it is to strive to get better, both at an individual and at an organizational level, we often fail to make continuous improvement a regular practice.

Continuous improvement (CI) is common sense for most of us. It is something the majority strives to achieve whether it’s for personal or for professional development. We want to get better, to improve because it gives us meaning, makes us feel better and it’s rewarding.

But just like New Year’s resolutions, after the excitement of starting a new project, things slowly die down. We lose interest, we get back to old habits, and stop improving, until a new project emerges, and the pattern reoccurs.

Sustaining continuous improvement, as straightforward as it seems, is also difficult.

What is a Warehouse Continuous Improvement plan?

We can see the active role of continuous improvement in innovation when we consider both new process’s, or ways of doing things.

As you can see, continuous improvement plays a major role in innovation, so naturally it’s one of my favourite topics. Even so, for the purpose of this blog, it’s still useful to explain briefly what we mean by continuous improvement.

Continuous improvement is a conscious, deliberate decision to continuously invest and focus on getting better. In the corporate context, continuous improvement is the ongoing process of improving products, services or processes.

The key word here is “conscious” because if you want to deliberately improve something, you need a plan that describes the steps ahead. So, a continuous improvement plan is just that. A guide for the decisions that lead to improvement.

The most important thing to remember is that whether you call it a plan or a program, both terms should consider not just the preparation work, but also the implementation and execution.

A continuous improvement plan is also a method of standardizing improvement throughout the warehouse. Even though a standard process is good for many business’s, larger companies can use it more like best practices, while still developing a continuous improvement program that responds to the needs of different departments or teams.

Continuous improvement works best when it becomes a mind-set and is ingrained in the key processes and practices of the warehouse department.

Although a continuous improvement plan needs to consider the business goals and objectives of the entire business, it should still be specific enough to address the problems and hidden opportunities in different departments. For example, the inwards goods department might need a different approach than the despatch department.

Many managers acknowledge the role improvement plays in achieving excellence and innovation. They might strive to become better every day, but they play it by the ear, which can work, with the right mind-set and enough dedication.

Why you need a continuous improvement plan?

So far continuous improvement seems straightforward, so why would you need a plan that tells you how to improve your warehouse?

If we think of the New Year’s resolution analogy, and how many people fail to achieve them, we can spot some patterns that explain why having a plan and sticking to it could prevent that.

One of the issues stems from the race to the end. We focus so much on the bigger goal that it becomes overwhelming and too difficult to attain. The key is to make small changes every day and split that bigger goal in smaller steps that lead to a change in behaviour and mind-set. To do that, we need to lay out a plan.

Take the topic of inventory – to simply say we are going to start a CI project to improve inventory. You can see straight away this is trying to eat the entire elephant in one bite. This topic has so many smaller micro CI projects associated with it that it makes sense to tackle this project in bit size chunks over time.

Another key aspect is that continuous improvement is seen as a journey with a destination, and once the goal is reached, it's done. This journey should never end if we want to see lasting behaviour changes that integrate in the culture of the warehousing team and department. This way, day-to-day activities will be directed towards improvement.

These day-to-day activities that add to warehouse improvements will eventually require you to make some choices. Continuous improvement can’t be applied on all warehouse areas at once. It becomes overwhelming and unproductive. That’s why a continuous improvement plan should also consider the need to prioritize warehouse projects and make conscious choices.

(It’s a good idea at this point to have the team review their KPI results (quality – speed – cost) and decide on priorities)

Now, let’s go through a few, more specific benefits of planning for continuous improvement:

Provides focus and direction

At the warehouse department level, when so many people have to work towards common goals, it’s essential to provide a clear focus and direction. A continuous improvement plan puts into perspective the objectives of the department and the roles and responsibilities of all those involved. It also helps explaining why something is important and needs improvement.

A visual representation of the goals, roles, and methods to achieve those makes it easier to solidify the objectives.

Win over stakeholders

Engaging relevant department stakeholders in adopting continuous improvement practices in their everyday work is one of the contributing factors to successful innovation. Think of production and the quality departments.

Whether these are shareholders that provide support and resources for your improvement initiatives, or employees that have valuable insight into improvement opportunities and how to go about those, a good plan can win them over. Worst case, they are not on board on the first try, but their feedback can help improve the warehouse plan.

Even though every business has its share of people that are more resistant to change, manifesting a long-term vision can turn into a catalyst and motivator so both parties can benefit.

Encourage proactivity

Without a plan people tend to react to external factors. A plan helps you better control the actions that influence the departments future and allows people to be proactive. This projection in the future helps you see past the quick wins. It gives time to ponder over actions that can be taken, instead of trying to constantly put out fires.

Improve overall business performance

This is rather a consequence of implementing continuous improvement, but having a plan to go about it, is indirectly leading to such business benefits.

Continuous improvement helps reduce warehouse and distribution costs, minimize warehouse waste, and increase operational warehouse efficiency. Most managers are aware of such benefits so we won’t go into too much detail here, but the thing to remember is that developing a realistic, yet ambitious plan will have a great impact on the bottom line of the business.