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Top Pitfalls to Avoid When Modernizing Your Warehouse GUEST COLUMN O ptimizing warehouse operations is critical for today's warehouses and distribution centers to reduce errors, achieve faster ful llment and improve customer satisfaction. However, with the rise of e-commerce, changing customer expectations, escalating shipping costs and more stringent carrier requirements, warehouses must continue to evolve to avoid being left behind. Throughout our 35-year history, we've seen it all. With the best of intentions, distributors have tried numerous innovative approaches in their warehouses only to be surprised (and not always pleasantly) by the outcome. To help you learn from others' missteps, here are some of the most common "gotchas" to avoid when it comes to modernizing warehouse operations. Purchasing and Integrating New Material Handling Equipment The decision to purchase material handling hardware is too often made in a vacuum and without considering how it must integrate into other processes in the warehouse, resulting in challenges to manage down the road. Additionally, a poorly managed integration can negatively affect the ROI of new material handling equipment, leaving this equipment idling, taking up space and hindering short-term productivity in the warehouse. It's been my experience that those making the purchasing decisions may not appropriately consider critical steps in the ful llment process. Consider a company that procures horizontal carousels that are not optimized to product type or have been miscon gured. This results in hindering a picker's productivity. Similarly, conveyor systems that are not optimized can interfere with meeting shipping commitments. To avoid such missteps, make sure to consult the right suppliers early in the selection process for perspective on how systems can and should complement each other. Managing warehouse operations presents an interactive ecosystem that must be understood rmly before committing to a material handling investment that falls short of your warehouse throughput objectives. Moving the ERP System to the Cloud Moving your ERP system to the cloud before your company is ready can present a host of issues. The move requires careful study of how it aligns with your organization's operations, the long-term bene ts of a cloud solution and the likelihood that these bene ts will be achieved. When considering a cloud migration, company leadership must assess a cloud-based ERP system's exibility (or lack thereof). They must also consider any process changes that must be made as their business evolves and the long-term commitment (e.g., via a binding legal contract) to a cloud model. Such agreements can be more restrictive regarding usage and subscription commitments, which must be considered. Skipping the process of conducting thorough research can lead to unexpected and disappointing results. Some of the companies we've engaged with were surprised to encounter a lack of system performance when using a cloud-based SaaS ERP system, resulting in reduced productivity rates across the board that they didn't expect. Outsourcing the IT Department Opting to outsource IT functions can present risks, as there can be instances where a company's upper management team doesn't fully understand or grasp the range of responsibilities that its IT department oversees. Or the outsourced IT department can oversimplify the tasks before them, particularly if customizations have been made to meet a company's unique objectives. Here's a real-world example: We previously worked with a company whose newly contracted IT department didn't know they were responsible for updating the UPS 32 INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION | January/February 2025 www.inddist.com By Eric Allais

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