Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

big picture

Ready, willing, and disabled

For warehouses struggling with a labor shortage, the solution may lie in an untapped resource: the disabled.

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Congress chose October for the annual observance in 1988 to bring attention to the employment needs of people with all types of disabilities.

Many would be surprised at just how difficult it is for the disabled to find work. The Labor Department's Office of Disability Employment Policy releases statistics each month on how many disabled people are employed compared with people without disabilities. In August, for example, the unemployment rate for people without disabilities was 4.8 percent, while the rate for those with disabilities was more than double that, at 11.3 percent.


Many would say that such a high unemployment rate for the disabled is understandable, reasoning that job performance concerns might deter those with disabilities from seeking work. Yet according to Cornell University's Disability Statistics website, that is not the case. It states that in 2014, "an estimated 9.2 percent of non-institutionalized persons aged 21 to 64 years with a disability in the United States who were not working, were actively looking for work."

So, we have a group of people who are willing to work but can't find jobs. At the same time, we have warehouses and DCs that are in need of skilled workers. I think I see a match here.

A couple of years ago, I visited a Walgreens DC in Anderson, S.C., to shoot two segments for our Move It! video program. Walgreens has long had an inclusion program, and at the time of my visit, more than 40 percent of the workers in Anderson had mental or physical disabilities.

This facility was designed with a few modifications to enable the disabled to work side by side with their able-bodied colleagues. Most are aimed at helping people with cognitive disabilities adapt to the operations. For example, instead of naming pick zones by long strings of numbers, Walgreens named them after animals, vegetables, and snack foods to help workers find stock locations more easily. I have to admit, it is a lot more fun going to the cheeseburger zone than to aisle 7, rack 4.

It is not difficult to adapt facilities to meet the needs of the disabled. And while this is good social policy, it is also good for business. Walgreens quickly found Anderson to be its most productive DC. The employees there are more dependable than the typical DC worker, and turnover has proved to be half that of other Walgreens facilities.

In a time when it is difficult to find good workers for our DCs, don't exclude what might possibly be **ital{your} most productive work force.

For information on hiring persons with disabilities, visit the Office of Disability Employment Policy website.

The Latest

More Stories

nimble smart robots for fedex

FedEx picks Nimble for fulfillment automation

Parcel giant FedEx Corp. is automating its fulfillment flows by investing in the AI robotics and autonomous e-commerce fulfillment technology firm Nimble, and announcing plans to use the San Francisco-based startup’s tech in its own returns network.

The size of FedEx’s investment wasn’t disclosed, but the company was the lead investor of Nimble’s $106 million “series C” funding round, announced last week. The round was co-led by existing shareholder Cedar Pine LLC.

Keep ReadingShow less

Featured

Logistics gives back: October 2024

For the past seven years, third-party service provider ODW Logistics has provided logistics support for the Pelotonia Ride Weekend, a campaign to raise funds for cancer research at The Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center–Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. As in the past, ODW provided inventory management services and transportation for the riders’ bicycles at this year’s event. In all, some 7,000 riders and 3,000 volunteers participated in the ride weekend.


Keep ReadingShow less
siemens logistics airport buggage

Vanderlande to acquire Siemens Logistics for $325 million

The logistics process automation provider Vanderlande has agreed to acquire Siemens Logistics for $325 million, saying its specialty in providing value-added baggage and cargo handling and digital solutions for airport operations will complement Netherlands-based Vanderlande’s business in the warehousing, airports, and parcel sectors.

The acquisition has received approval from the Supervisory and Management Boards of both Vanderlande and its parent company Toyota Industries Corporation (TICO) as well as the Management Board of parent company Siemens AG.

Keep ReadingShow less

Resilience is a daily fight

I recently came across a report showing that 86% of CEOs around the world see resiliency problems in their supply chains, and that business leaders are spending more time than ever tackling supply chain-related challenges. Initially I was surprised, thinking that the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic surely prepared industry leaders for just about anything, helping to bake risk and resiliency planning into corporate strategies for companies of all sizes.

But then I thought about the growing number of issues that can affect supply chains today—more frequent severe weather events, accelerating cybersecurity threats, and the tangle of emerging demands and regulations around decarbonization, to name just a few. The level of potential problems seems to be increasing at lightning speed, making it difficult, if not impossible, to plan for every imaginable scenario.

Keep ReadingShow less
AI tops digital supply chain investment priorities

AI tops digital supply chain investment priorities

Investing in artificial intelligence (AI) is a top priority for supply chain leaders as they develop their organization’s technology roadmap, according to data from research and consulting firm Gartner.

AI—including machine learning—and Generative AI (GenAI) ranked as the top two priorities for digital supply chain investments globally among more than 400 supply chain leaders surveyed earlier this year. But key differences apply regionally and by job responsibility, according to the research.

Keep ReadingShow less