Archive for Labor
Task interleaving is an advanced productivity practice enabled by leading warehouse management systems (WMS) with task management engines. Task interleaving is designed to reduce deadheading—i.e., when a worker, for example, picks products and drops them off at a dock and then returns to the picking area without performing any useful tasks along the way. In most operations, some workers are dedicated to picking, while others are dedicated to put-away. Task… Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago, Evan Falchuk, President and COO of Best Doctors, posted a piece on his blog about J.B. Hunt and its approach to healthcare benefits. Evan interviewed Rick George, Director of Benefits at J.B. Hunt. You can read Evan’s posting here, but with his permission, I’ve copied the Q&A portion below.
This posting interested me because it sheds light on a… Continue reading
In the last annual survey done by WERC, the average warehouse’s turnover was between 9.4 and 15 percent. This is too high, and turnover is expensive. How can companies perform better in this area? Could the composition of the workforce make a difference?
In recent research conducted by the Pew Research Center, they comment that “the American work force is graying—and not just because the American population… Continue reading
Costco, Starbucks, and Whole Foods unveiled this past Sunday an alternative to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). According to a very informative Bloomberg.com article by Holly Rosenkrantz, “Under the alternative being sought by the three companies, management could demand a secret-ballot election, and a provision of the original bill requiring binding arbitration for union contracts would be dropped. Penalties would be increased for companies that take action… Continue reading
A Trade War with Mexico
· CommentsIt’s been more than a decade in the making, but Mexico is finally taking action against the United States for violating the terms of NAFTA. Specifically, the U.S. was supposed to allow Mexican trucks to travel on border-state roads in 1995, and to drive anywhere in the country by January 2000. Citing safety concerns, the U.S. has kept this NAFTA provision stuck in 1995, restricting Mexican truckers to a 20-mile… Continue reading
Employee Free Choice Act Gets Introduced
· CommentsThe Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was introduced again yesterday in the U.S. House and Senate (the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee also held a hearing yesterday on the topic, and you can watch the video and read the testimonies here). According to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), “Just as the National Labor Relations Act, the 40 hour week and the minimum wage helped to pull us… Continue reading
I hate multi-tasking. Give me one task at a time, and sufficient time to accomplish it, and I’m fairly happy. But that rarely happens. Even so, my work life has to be easier than a warehouse manager’s. Their main job, of course, is to make sure that customer orders are fulfilled accurately and on-time every day. This alone is more than a full time job. But consider all the other… Continue reading
I came across a working paper recently from the Harvard Business School called “Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting.” Although hundreds of studies have shown that setting specific, challenging goals can drive behavior and boost performance in powerful ways, the authors of this paper argue that goal setting has been “over prescribed”. In their words, “goal setting has powerful and predictable side effects…and should… Continue reading
