Don Jacobson is the president of Optimum Supply Chain Recruiters, a recruiting organization that specializes in the placement of management personnel in the logistics field on a nationwide basis. You can reach him by calling Optimum SCR at (800) 300-7609 or by visiting the firm's Web site, www.OptimumSCR.com.
Your company is about to open a company-owned and-operated regional distribution center (rather than hiring a third-party logistics provider to run the facility). The team has selected the site, and preparations have begun for filling the building with equipment, racking, conveyors and systems. The carriers have been chosen and are ready to go. Next up are the people.
One of the biggest tasks the Human Resources (HR) department performs is that of human resource planning—the process of creating a logistics staffing plan. The entire procedure, which can be summarized in the following steps, is focused on deploying human resources as effectively as possible, where and when they are needed.
Step one: Employee forecasting
When moving into a new area, the first step is to evaluate the marketplace. Also referred to as employment forecasting, this process calls for a detailed analysis of factors like the availability of skilled and knowledgeable workers—from managers to laborers; economic and seasonal trends; area salary/benefits trends; and union/non-union status.
At the same time, existing company facilities should begin preparing so they will be in a position to lend management personnel to the new facility during the ramp-up period if needed.
Step two: In-house or outsource or both?
Once your company has identified the available pool of workers, it's time to create the staffing plan. Some questions to consider include the following:
Will the hiring process for the new center be performed more efficiently by an outside consulting firm that specializes in supply chain personnel?
Should the hiring function be split up between an outsourced specialist and in-house departments? For example, should you use outside logistics headhunters to recruit the management team and have the rest of the staff openings filled by the in-house department?
How many managers can be and/or should be transferred from other locations within the company, and how many new ones should be brought in? When evaluating the hiring of new managers, you must allow a minimum of 90 days both for training and to give them a voice in the hiring of their soon-to-be staff members.
What are the best vehicles for advertising the openings within the new community?
How will candidates be evaluated for optimum hiring success?
Who will handle reference assessments?
Step three: Recruiting
The team assigned to staffing the new center must create a marketing plan for the openings. Complete job descriptions for all vacancies should be posted internally through the company Web site, the company news letter, HR departments at all company locations, and in break rooms and common areas throughout the organization. Offering referral bonuses encourages current employees to recommend family and friends.
Externally, you'll want to find ways to promote the opening of the new center and the positions to be filled throughout the distribution center's new community. Job fairs, local newspaper advertising, and local temp-to-perm agencies are excellent places to begin. If the company is seasonal, look for counter-cyclical companies in the area that may provide a resource with trained personnel who could now be employed year round (half a year at company A and half a year at company B).
Step four: Selection
Comprehensive candidate profiles (mandatory for management openings, recommended for positions such as forklift opera tors or pickers) should be devel oped . These go beyond routine job descriptions showing the standard list of primary duties and responsibilities. Profiles should also include the knowledge, experience and skills required along with a wish list of qualities associated with the ideal candidate.
In preparation for the interviews, you'll need to make some decisions regarding the interview process. Will acceptable candidates work their way up through a sequence of interviews or will the outsourced team and/or HR narrow the selection list to a small number to be interviewed by department heads and/or upper management? Establish a list of legally acceptable interview questions a round the identified selection criteria and determine which elements might be résumé red flags.
Adding a numerical rating schedule to the questions will provide an objective formula for determining the best candidate for the job.
Step five: Verification and the offer
Immediately prior to the job offer, perform a complete background check on the applicant. In addition, consider making negative drug tests a condition of employment for all prospective employees, regardless of their rank. These are protective actions, used to assure all workers of a safe and pleasant place to work . An employee with a background of violent criminal behavior might present a threat of bodily injury to all who work with him. A staff member addicted to drugs may, at the very least, not pull his/her own weight,and at the worst, lie, steal or endanger a co-worker's personal safety. When viewed as the company's responsibilities to safeguard its staff and property, these pre-employent screenings become trust builders between staff and management. This is especially true if you are going to have a shift operation.
Careful preparation of the offer, especially for management candidates, will ensure that it is specific and all encompassing. Align the agreement with the elements of the candidate profile and have the legal department review it to assure that all bases are being covered to protect the company.
Ask 10 warehousing experts about the optimal level of inventory visibility, and you'll get a dozen different responses.
Sure, most would agree on the importance of accurate inventory counts—knowing exactly how many items are in every carton, crate, and pallet stored in the facility. But depending on what type of goods the warehouse handles, opinions will vary widely on how much accuracy is good enough and what's the best technique for counting.
Fortunately, we live in an age when there have never been so many tools available to take those counts. Workers can perform cycle counts with paper and clipboards, as they've done for decades. Or a facility can deploy internet of things (IoT) sensors at dock doors, computer-vision cameras mounted on conveyors, handheld RFID (radio-frequency identification) scanners, wearable devices like ring scanners or voice-picking headsets, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), or even indoor flying drones.
In fact, many companies are now using those devices to obtain snapshots of the inventory held in various locations throughout their DCs. But assembling those snapshots into a full panoramic view remains an almost mythical pursuit, according to John Santagate, vice president, robotics at Körber Supply Chain Software. "Visibility remains the unicorn in warehouse operations," Santagate says. "No matter how much automation and RFID you have, you need to tie it all together. Visibility for visibility's sake is somewhat useless."
In other words, simply collecting data isn't enough these days. To master the inventory visibility game, a company must be able to analyze the information it collects; compare the results to the records in, say, its warehouse management system (WMS) or order management system (OMS); and quickly act on any discrepancies. Done right, these steps can lead to a number of follow-on benefits, including the ability to track and trace on demand, determine optimal restocking rates, and build the supply chain resilience needed to weather the inevitable supply disruptions.
However, few companies have reached that goal, Santagate says. "You need to know what's in the entire network, where it is, and how to capitalize on it. Most folks are still chasing that and making [only] incremental improvements."
CLOSING THE GAP
Santagate's assessment is backed up by a study conducted last August among 1,000 U.S. supply chain managers by Impinj, a developer of RFID solutions and software. In its "Supply Chain Integrity Outlook 2025" research report, the firm found that the majority (91%) of supply chain managers believe they are equipped to drive accurate supply chain visibility, but only a third (33%) can consistently obtain accurate, real-time inventory data.
According to Impinj's chief revenue officer, Jeff Dossett, that data accuracy gap leaves many struggling to attain the level of insights, visibility, and accuracy required to drive confidence in their supply chain and respond quickly to market changes. "Supply chain managers continue to face data blind spots that prevent them from ensuring secure, reliable, and adaptable supply chains," Dossett said in a release announcing the study's findings. "It's essential that organizations address the data accuracy gap by putting technology in place to surface accurate data that fuels the real-time, actionable insights and visibility needed to ensure supply chain resilience."
HOW SHARP IS YOUR VISION?
That raises a couple of questions for DC managers seeking to bridge that visibility gap: How much detail is good enough, and how can they make the optimal use of the data they collect?
Those are tricky questions to answer, because many warehouse managers probably don't realize what they're missing, says Chris Coote, head of product at Dexory, a London-based company that makes inventory-counting robots.
In fact, enhanced visibility sometimes brings to light underlying problems that managers didn't realize they had. "Visibility reveals what people don't know about their warehouse," Coote says. For example, he says, there could be a corner of the warehouse that's particularly prone to mispicks, but the managers are not aware there's a problem and don't scan for that. "Or the [problem] could be something they do scan for but don't realize they could be [addressing more effectively]."
Most people think their system of record is pretty good, but in reality, those systems can almost always be improved, according to Coote. In many cases, those improvements would bring real benefits, like freeing human workers from the drudgery of case counting so they can take on higher-level tasks, he says.
Dexory's view aligns closely with Körber's perspective on inventory visibility—so closely, in fact, that the two companies last month launched a partnership to integrate the DexoryView advanced visibility platform with Körber's warehouse management software (WMS). The partnership will enable users to swiftly uncover and address issues in the warehouse through data-driven decision-making based on Dexory's daily scans of the facility, the companies said.
Based on these and other market developments, it looks like the warehouse visibility sector is getting its moment in the sun. It's also clear that the technology used for inventory counting is getting "smarter" and faster by the day. Together, those trends could combine to shine a bright light on the darkest corners of the warehouse, illuminating every pallet, case, and carton so DCs can get a sharper view of all the inventory inside.
When a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 2010, a fledgling humanitarian group knew its day had come—after months of planning, it would finally be able to take its model live and see how well it worked. Formed a year earlier to support humanitarian relief efforts, that group, Airlink, had established a network of airline partners it could call on to provide free or discounted airlift in times of crisis. As it turned out, the model held up in testing. In the weeks following the earthquake, Airlink successfully coordinated the movement of more than 2,000 doctors and nurses and more than 40 shipments of aid totaling more than 500,000 pounds into the disaster zone.
Fifteen years later, the group is still carrying out that mission—but on a much larger scale. Airlink's network today includes over 200 aid organizations and over 50 commercial and charter airlines. Since its inception, the group has flown 13,500 relief workers and transported 18 million pounds of humanitarian cargo, directly helping 60 million people impacted by natural and man-made disasters.
Airlink plans to celebrate the milestone year through PR campaigns and a web series titled "15 Years in 15 Minutes." An episode will be released on the 15th of each month; all 12 episodes will feature Airlink President and CEO Steve Smith sitting down with an industry partner to discuss innovation in logistical strategy and meeting the demands of an evolving landscape in humanitarian relief. The videos will be available on YouTube.
In a statement marking the group's 15th anniversary, Smith attributed the group's success to corporate partnerships and "established, trusting relationships" with NGOs (nongovernmental organizations); airlines, including United Airlines, American Airlines, and Qatar Airways; and foundations, including the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, GE Aerospace Foundation, Paul Allen Foundation, Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation, UPS Foundation, and Flexport.org Fund.
When planning routes for their delivery trucks, fleet managers—or more likely, their route planning software systems—consider factors like mileage, road height and weight restrictions, traffic conditions, and weather. They can now add another variable to the mix, thanks to a new tool that calculates the chances that a load might be stolen along the way.
Developed by New Jersey-based risk assessment firm Verisk Analytics, CargoNet RouteScore API generates a cargo theft "risk score" that provides a relative measure of probability that crime and loss will occur along any given route in the U.S. and Canada. Using a proprietary algorithm, the tool rates routes on a scale from 1 to 100—with 1 representing the lowest likelihood of theft—based on risk factors such as cargo type, value, length of haul, origin, destination, day of the week, and the theft history of specific truck stops.
Companies can also use the tool to protect their cargo proactively, Verisk says. For example, before sending a truck out on a high-risk route, a carrier could implement additional security measures like tracking devices, driver teams, and escorts or even secure parking spots in advance.
Verisk adds that the tool's API format allows for easy integration with both proprietary systems and the third-party transportation management systems (TMS) that many companies use to manage their trucking operations.
Drivers typically choose a specific blend of gasoline based on their car's engine, picking high-octane fuel for a sports car and regular gas for the family sedan. Now a company has launched a similar range of products for diesel fuel, saying the offerings are calibrated for vehicles like commercial trucks.
That company, Nevada-based Advanced Refining Concepts LLC (ARC), will launch two new products, GDiesel Lightning and GDiesel Thunder, by mid-year, the company said in January.
According to the firm, GDiesel Lightning is a lighter, faster-igniting diesel fuel than the classic mix and is designed specifically for urban start-stop operations—think delivery vehicles, light trucks, city buses, and passenger vehicles. GDiesel Thunder is a heavier, higher energy-content fuel made for steadier and more continuous engine operating modes, making it suitable for long-haul trucking or rail and marine applications.
According to the company, choosing the right fuel for a particular application can reduce visible smoke and other regulated emissions, maximize efficiency, and minimize engine wear. And both fuels meet current diesel regulatory standards, it says, obviating the need for modifications to engines, fueling infrastructures, or warranties.
The new fuels' potential is not just limited to petroleum diesel. ARC says the process to make GDiesel Lightning and GDiesel Thunder has been successfully applied to renewable diesel, and both petroleum and bio-based versions of these fuels can be used as next-generation blend stock or to vastly increase biodiesel blend ratios and efficiency.
"Engine manufacturers are at their limits trying to improve efficiency and emissions from standard diesel. It is long past due time to redesign the fuel side," ARC Managing Partner Peter Gunnerman said in a release. "It has never made sense to assume that one diesel fuel option can be efficient for all diesel engine types and operating cycles."
Know someone who is making a difference in the world of logistics? Then consider nominating that person as one of DC Velocity’s “Rainmakers”—professionals from all facets of the business whose achievements set them apart from the crowd. In the past, they have included practitioners, consultants, academics, vendors, and even military commanders.
To identify these achievers, DC Velocity’s editorial directors work with members of the magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board. The nomination process begins in January and concludes in April with a vote to determine which nominees will be invited to become Rainmakers.