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You Do That?
Column Sentry - The Solution for Battered Building Columns
Want a sure fire way to get your CFO interested in saving money? In a matter of minutes you can deliver him/her a ROI that will make sense. Building columns and rack systems are not designed to be struck by lifting equipment, let alone to be impacted on an ongoing basis.
Metal protection can crumple upon tow motor impact. A metal column doesn’t “spring” back to it original shape. Once damaged, metal is no longer effective and needs to be replaced. Also, it may have been bolted both to your rack and floor. Upon impact, both can be damaged, as well as your inventory.
Help is on the way. Morrison Company has several options to protect your building’s columns and rack systems. One great option from Column Sentry includes the patented Sentry Air Cushion System featured in their protection products.
Each protection product is 42” tall and comes in sizes to fit columns or rack uprights as little as 4”. Their line extends to sizes up to 18” square and can be installed in minutes.
This unique product is constructed from linear low-density polyethylene, is UV stabilized and FDA compliant. Additional specifications can be sent to by requesting Columns Sentry information on our website.
ROI determination can be as simple as collecting the number of times each has occurred:
- Damage to building column
- Bent of damaged rack upright
- Damage to cement building support
- Damage to water or waste water pipes
In each example, in addition to the cost of replacing the item, the lost time can be as much as ten times the cost. After a quick analysis, the Column Sentry protection product line provided through Morrison Company is a natural for any manufacturing or warehousing facility.
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Test Your Knowledge
Are Manufacturers Complying With RFID?
Remember the adage, what’s in it for me? If you’re a manufacturer and the topic is RFID, not much at this point. At least that’s what the folks at the Aberdeen Group say. “Radio-frequency identification (RFID) mandates serve different ends, none of which are focused at improving the state for manufacturers,” the Massachusetts-based consultancy noted in a recent report.
So it’s probably not surprising that manufacturers are dragging their feet when it comes to implementing RFID. “Manufacturers are concerned about margin erosion caused by implementing the new technology and are unwilling to do more than the minimum,” the report notes. “They adopt RFID at the last possible minute, assuming that it will mitigate their implementation risks and reduce the overall costs.” But manufacturers may be sorry they did.
The Aberdeen report goes on to warn that delaying implementation will compound the risks, not mitigate them. “Those manufacturers that are holding back run the risk of not having enough time to make the technology work for them, thereby failing to meet the compliance deadlines and jeopardizing their business relationship with the mandating enterprises.”
Still, companies that focus solely on meeting those compliance deadlines miss the point. If manufacturers expect to recoup their investment, they’ll need to go well beyond simply complying with their customers’ mandates and use the technology to streamline their own operations. “RFID technology promises improved operational efficiency and customer service through improved inventory management, process efficiencies, data accuracy, enhanced asset utilization, and reduced leakage,” the consultants say. “Manufacturers need to execute pilot programs, learn how best the technology will help them, implement the necessary compliance solutions within the deadline, and then expand the technology’s use to gain the promised benefits and turn RFID into a business differentiator.”
For more details on the RFID report, visit www.aberdeen.com. Morrison Company also features a white paper on implementing RFID. Request your copy at by visiting our website.
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Get Your CFO on Your Side
How CFO’s Look at Justifying Ergonomics and Safety
Congratulations on representing logistics, manufacturing or safety at your company. Still others reading this are an engineer or maintenance manager. Friend, you are in this role because you excel at solving problems and are a good communicator. I bet sometime in the last twelve months you have considered justifying an expenditure that would either reduce accidents or lost time incidents. Your stumbling block was your CFO.
Perhaps your ability to advance to the next level in your management structure rests on your ability to clearly communicate (in a way they understand and accept) to upper management the financial rationale for the planned expense.
If there were a methodology you could use with your CFO to justify a project, using acceptable financial terms, wouldn't it be worth your time to learn? Let’s learn how.
Whether you realize it or not, you may already have the tools to impact your company’s income statement in ways a CFO dreams about. The following four points should help guide you to a better outcome when you meet with your CFO.
- Define your direct costs. These dollars tightly encircle an injured employee and include medical costs, salaries paid during lost workdays, and payments to employees for their injury. The financial transactions are usually tracked by human resources, finance or even in your own group.
- Agree on an indirect cost ratio. The acceptance of indirect costs for an injury is similar to the “cost of quality” paradigm shift that occurred decades ago, when organizations realized that poor quality affected more on an income statement than “Returns and Allowances. The indirect costs of an injury include lost productivity, overtime to cover for a missing employee, training costs for a replacement employee and case management.
- Discuss equivalent revenues and risk. In other words, avoiding an injury is equivalent to avoiding the loss of some level of revenues to maintain the same level of pretax profit dollars. The proposal you provide to the CFO should be to lower risk.
- Assure a ROI. If you can’t measure your direct or indirect savings, you can’t prove a ROI. It is essential that the costs of the program be reduced as well as the costs of the problem. Most organizations support a 12-month payback. If you can prove the result of the expenditure will reduce costs, risk and positively impact profit, your CFO will be more likely to advocate your ergonomics or safety plan.
To receive your copy of the expanded guidelines, contact Morrison Company.
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Case Study – Seismic Engineering
Drug Wholesaler Relies on Morrison Seismic Design Expertise
This distributor of pharmaceutical products and services’ leadership role emerged from the merger of two competing firms in 2001. The new firm’s rollout plan called for a redeployment of their distribution centers across the U.S. Working through their facility-planning consultant the initial project was new a 283,000 sq. foot distribution center located in Northern California.
Since the location is in a high seismic zone, the design for the storage and retrieval system needed to assure the local building zone board the facility would be in compliance with the IBC specifications.
Initially Morrison Company helped the client obtain from the general contractor the soil bearing capacity analysis. This data was used to determine the ability of the soil to support the required load in a safe manner without gross distortion resulting from objectionable settlement and a seismic event. Armed with this information, Morrison Company engineers designed the support structures within the storage and retrieval solution so the facility would both pass building code.
Working closely with the customer and the seismic engineering firm, Morrison Company engineers provided structural calculations and component detail drawings that included end plates and a larger footplate for the selective rack and modules. Additionally the decked rack was reinforced along with larger footplates to assure the structure would withstand a seismic event. This extra time was necessary to enable the project to proceed efficiently.
Morrison Company led the effort to design and install an integrated storage and retrieval solution that included 6,000 pallet positions, 9,000 shelving units, a three level pick module that accommodated 480 pallets, and decked rack supporting 7,800 deck levels.
The result was a facility that has performed well for the client. Since this initial project Morrison Company was been rewarded with seven additional distribution center projects.
For a copy of the Morrison Company white paper on our seismic engineering strategy, contact the company as 440-946-8505, or visit the website.
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Sick About Thinking of Implementing Six Sigma?
Improving Vendor Quality Control
Quality circles, total quality management, and Six Sigma are all various programs aimed at improving quality in an organization. They have been successfully implemented in many organizations, but they have failed to attract a following in the distribution industry. Major reasons for this are the complexity and resources required to implement these highly touted quality control programs. Are you seeking ways to improve vendor quality control without diving headlong into a new way of doing business? Take heart.
There is an option that relies on the basics of upholding merchandise quality. The following are ten proven strategies for improving your vendor quality control program.
These techniques also can be used to design such a program if you do not have one in place today.
- Get accurate item descriptions. Work with the vendor so your product descriptions match theirs. This will assure that the items picked and shipped to you are what you ordered.
- Write a vendor compliance manual. This document lays out the details of how you and your vendors will handle each and every step in the product fulfillment relationship.
- Establish good vendor relationships. Among other things, it is important to create a contact list as well as identify the key contact with which you can direct questions concerning quality or performance.
- Use vendor scorecards in the review process. Make vendor review a part of the merchandise ordering cycle. Schedule a planned vendor-review process to coincide with placing orders for product.
- Set up correction remedy procedures. Define the amount and method of applying vendor charge backs when entering into a contract with a vendor, and record this information in the compliance manual.
For the remaining five points and even more details on improving on vendor quality control, contact Morrison Company.
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