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A Tale of Two DCs
Let's turn back to the disorganized warehouse. Its lack of structure and
orderliness impacts not only the workers who deserve the best
working conditions, but also the company's reputation and business.
Disarray within the warehouse can lead to the following issues:
Warehouse #1
1. The disarray inside the warehouse destroys confidence in the product's value
or ability to deliver on-time shipments, without errors and damage free. It
hurts the company's reputation.
2. Visibility to on-hand inventory is difficult to rely upon. This also impacts the
ability to pick accurately and efficiently and can lead to delays and errors in
shipping. These cause huge headaches for customers that aren't easy (or
cheap) to rectify.
3. A lack of organization can snowball into big inefficiencies, causing slow
picking speeds and lethargic throughput. These symptoms are often an
indicator that team members are overwhelmed, or that employee morale is
suffering for some reason.
4. As we saw in the YouTube video above, the lack of organization within the
warehouse, or poor staff training lead to safety hazards.
5. Finally, a warehouse in disarray is hard to streamline. There is so much going
on that it's difficult to imagine how any process can be improved.
