The soft skills of logistics: interview with Candace Holowicki
Candace Holowicki was tasked with bringing TriMas Corp.'s global logistics operations under corporate control. Her battles, and ultimately her success, demonstrated how logistics can be two parts psychology and one part process.
Mark Solomon joined DC VELOCITY as senior editor in August 2008, and was promoted to his current position on January 1, 2015. He has spent more than 30 years in the transportation, logistics and supply chain management fields as a journalist and public relations professional. From 1989 to 1994, he worked in Washington as a reporter for the Journal of Commerce, covering the aviation and trucking industries, the Department of Transportation, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he worked for Traffic World for seven years in a similar role. From 1994 to 2008, Mr. Solomon ran Media-Based Solutions, a public relations firm based in Atlanta. He graduated in 1978 with a B.A. in journalism from The American University in Washington, D.C.
Candace Holowicki tells how she dealt with the challenge of stepping into a newly created corporate-level logistics position.
Among Candace Holowicki's résumé chops—along with 20-plus years of logistics experience and a master's degree in global supply chain management from Indiana University—is a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Michigan. The latter stood Holowicki in good stead in August 2011, when she was tapped for the newly created post of director of global logistics at Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based TriMas Corp.
As Holowicki toured the business units, she quickly grasped that her people skills would be just as critical as mastering the company's operations, if not more so. The business unit leaders owned their respective transport and logistics functions, and Holowicki wasn't sure how they would react to a newcomer effectively riding herd over them. "Was I there to make trouble for them by observing what they were doing and then reporting back that it was all wrong? Was I there to tell them what to do and how to do it? And did they have to listen to me?" she remembered asking herself. "I felt it was important to build rapport with the business unit decision makers and to learn about the TriMas segments before I tried to change anything."
Today, TriMas's global supply chain is in sync and operating efficiently. Most important, there is trust and collaboration between Holowicki and the business unit leaders, a far cry from what she might have expected six years ago. In an interview with Mark B. Solomon, DC Velocity's executive editor-news, Holowicki described her concerns, her approach, and how a successful logistics strategy can be as much of an art form as it is a science.
Q: Can you describe what TriMas does, what your current role is, and the company's logistics footprint?
A: TriMas is a diversified global manufacturer of engineered products, with businesses operating in four segments: packaging, aerospace, energy, and engineered components. My role is to develop and implement global logistics programs that enable our businesses to provide reliable, on-time, damage-free delivery to our customers via the lowest-cost provider available, within the optimal mode, at the time of shipping. Our logistics footprint is primarily within and between the North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions.
Q: You stepped into a newly created role at the corporate level. How was TriMas managing its supply chain before you joined?
A: Prior to creating the corporate function, our business units managed their own supply chains. They were autonomous from each other, and from corporate. There was an attempt to consolidate the parcel and LTL (less-than-truckload) spend under common contracts managed by the largest business unit. This resulted in programs that served the managing business unit very well but did not meet the diverse needs of all of the business units.
Q: You encountered significant pushback early on from leaders of the business units. What was the reason behind it, and what was your approach toward overcoming it?
A: I encountered immediate pushback from the business unit that had been coordinating the LTL and parcel spending. The unit did not want to give up control of those programs. There was also pushback from business units whose needs were not met by the current logistics program. Those businesses needed to use non-TriMas providers in order to meet their customers' expectations, but this spend was reported as "non-compliant" to TriMas leadership.
My approach toward overcoming the pushback was inclusion. I included the logistics manager of the largest business unit in meetings and conference calls with carriers and other providers, and made it clear to him and his boss that my plan was to collaborate with them and to build upon the work they had already done in LTL and parcel. For the business units forced to use non-TriMas providers, I included all of the carriers they were using to fill the gaps in our program as "approved carriers" until we completed our program redesign as a group.
Q: What were the biggest operational issues you encountered during your first months there? How did you address and resolve them?
A: The biggest operational issue I encountered was our carrier selection process. We had a partially implemented TMS (transportation management system) that should have provided dynamic carrier routing for the sites that had it. In addition, the rest of the sites had the most complex Excel-based routing guide that I have ever seen.
The sites without access to the TMS were not using the routing guide due to its complexity. To address this, I assessed the status of the TMS implementation and then project-managed the implementation to completion.
The sites with access to the TMS faced a different challenge. They weren't using the system within the framework of a well-designed shipping process. They just dropped the TMS in as the last step. In the worst case, the shipping clerks selected the mode, based on their experience, before entering the shipment information into the TMS. The software would then select the lowest-cost carrier with the necessary transit time within the assigned mode. However, we were not allowing the tool to show us lower-cost options via a different mode, opportunities to combine shipments, or ways to build multistop truckloads. Essentially, the TMS was just making a poor process more efficient.
The first step was to redesign our shipping process to optimize the TMS's value. We combined parcel and LTL shipments that shipped within two days of each other. We converted LTL shipments with the same ship date into multistop truckload moves, converted LTL minimum-charge shipments weighing less than 190 pounds to small parcel, and combined long-haul LTL shipments moving within the same week to the same state or region into pool distribution. By demonstrating the potential savings, I was able to get buy-in from the business units to redesign their shipping process to incorporate the full functionality of the TMS.
Q: Was there an "aha!" moment when you realized that you had won the trust of the business units and that you were all on the same page?
A: It was different with each business unit. With a couple of them, I realized that I had won their trust when they came to me for direction or assistance before making a change, instead of just doing what they wanted and then coming to me for help if it went wrong. One particularly independent business unit completely surprised me when its president contacted me and asked that I prepare a complete review of its logistics, along with opportunities for improvement. We then worked together to implement the cost-savings opportunities and had biweekly conference calls with his team to track progress and issues. After a couple of successes, I was just one of the team.
Q: Beyond mastering the "art of listening," which is easier said than done, what advice would you give other executives who walk into a similar situation?
A: My advice is to be patient, build rapport, and do your fact checking. That may sound obvious, but when you are new to an organization, you want to prove yourself and show value as quickly as possible. Making changes before you have a thorough knowledge of what the current state is, and how it came to be, can be a recipe for disaster. Remain flexible and adaptable in your approach to a problem, because in the end, both business and logistics are still about relationships.
Robotic technology has been sweeping through warehouses nationwide as companies seek to automate repetitive tasks in a bid to speed operations and free up human labor for other activities. Many of those implementations have been focused on picking tasks, a trend driven largely by the need to fill accelerating e-commerce orders. But as the robotic-picking market matures and e-commerce growth levels off, the robotic revolution is shifting behind the picking lines, with many companies investing in pallet-handling robots as a way to keep efficiency gains coming.
“Earlier in this decade and the previous decade, we [saw] a lot of [material handling] transformation around e-commerce and the handling of goods to order,” explains Josh Kivenko, chief marketing officer and senior vice president at Vecna Robotics, which provides autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for pallet handling and logistics operations. “Now we’re talking about pallets—moving material in bulk behind that line.”
Kivenko explains that whether items are being packaged and shipped directly to a customer’s home address or moved as finished goods to a shipping bay for store delivery, those items are first moved in bulk in some way, often by human hands and with human-operated equipment. He describes warehouses as chaotic environments in which humans move pallets and cartons in multiple ways—up and down, side to side, from receiving to storage, from storage to shipping, or via cross-docking. Automation can help bring order to that chaos.
“What we’re trying to do is relieve some of the pressure [on the] humans [doing] this work,” Kivenko says of companies that develop pallet-handling robotic technologies. “At the end of the day, we’re trying to automate some of those flows, relieve labor pressure, save costs, and keep the goods flowing.”
But automated pallet handling isn’t right for every situation, so it’s important to understand the warehouse conditions required and the protocols and best practices needed to make it a win. Here are some guidelines for applying pallet-handling robots and gaining the most from your investment.
FIRST, UNDERSTAND THE TECHNOLOGY
Pallet-handling robots fall into four general categories, explains Rich O’Connor, vice president of storage and automation for Raymond West Group, a business unit of lift truck manufacturer The Raymond Corp. They include:
Palletizing/depalletizing robots, which are used to load or unload items onto and off of pallets, usually with the use of a robotic arm for picking and placing. Today, these systems are being increasingly integrated with automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) to further streamline pallet handling in the warehouse, O’Connor explains.
Autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), which are used to transport pallets within the warehouse. Often outfitted with lift decks or conveyors, or designed to tug or tow items, these robots move pallets from point A to B within a facility. AGVs, which often follow a marked guide-path or wire in the floor, have been around for many years, but the advent of high-performance guidance and vision systems is allowing them more flexibility today, O’Connor says. AMRs are self-guided vehicles that use software and sensors to navigate their way through the warehouse.
Forklift AGVs and AMRs, which can move products both horizontally, from place to place, and vertically, into and out of storage racks. They come in various styles—including stackers, counterbalanced trucks, reach trucks, and even very narrow aisle (VNA) vehicles for use in densely packed warehouses. These vehicles are more complex than those used only for horizontal transport, O’Connor explains. They must be “highly integrated” into the facility’s warehouse management system (WMS) or warehouse execution system (WES) so that they know precisely where to retrieve and deliver pallets within the facility.
Robotic pallet shuttles, which move pallets into, out of, and within dense storage racking. The Raymond Corp. describes such a system as “a standalone, automated deep-lane pallet storage system that utilizes self-powered shuttle carriages to move pallets toward the back or front in a racking channel. Shuttles are motor driven and travel along rails within a storage lane.”
O’Connor and others say that no matter which of these technologies you’re investing in, it’s important to remember that they are all part of a larger system designed to optimize operations throughout the warehouse.
“The expanding role of all these different styles working together is what’s amazing today,” O’Connor says.
SECOND, ENSURE THE TECHNOLOGY IS A FIT
Kivenko, of Vecna, also emphasizes the importance of pallet-handling robots working in concert, particularly AMRs and AGVs.
“The magic isn’t just that the robots are autonomous and driving by themselves. The magic is multiple robots—when you have a [whole integrated] system [in place],” he says. “[It’s] how the fleet operates autonomously and optimizes itself for continuous improvement. That’s where the exponential gains are. [It’s] not just about automating what a worker does; it’s about automating a system.”
But you can’t install these systems in just any warehouse and expect magic. Kivenko and others point to certain conditions that enable the best robotic pallet-handling outcomes, especially when it comes to transportation-based and forklift-type AMRs and AGVs.
“The robots that I sell are large-load machines with very expensive technology,” Kivenko explains. “They move material, generally, in larger facilities. And in order for them to produce a return [on investment]—because that’s the name of the game here—they have to be higher-velocity facilities.”
He says pallet-handling robots work best in large facilities running multiple shifts, usually more than five days a week. Wider aisles allow the equipment to move more freely through the facility and at higher speeds, to optimize efficiency and productivity. Strong Wi-Fi networks and clean, dry environments also help keep equipment running at top performance.
O’Connor agrees that pallet-handling robots are best suited to facilities with multishift operations, where they can ease labor constraints and boost productivity. And he says many customers are willing to extend the typical two- to three-year ROI period to five years in order to achieve those gains. But there is even more to it than that. O’Connor’s colleague John Rosenberger says customers must first step back and analyze their processes to ensure that, even if they have the right facility for pallet-handling AMRs or AGVs, they are moving material in the most efficient way to begin with.
“Many times, we find that the processes in place [are inefficient],” says Rosenberger, who is director of iWarehouse Gateway and global telematics for The Raymond Corp. He emphasizes the importance of analyzing existing data—from an equipment telematics system or similar—to determine the best path toward automation.
“Do you have congestion zones now?” he asks. “They’ll still exist if you automate [those processes exactly].”
THIRD, MAKE SIMPLICITY A PRIORITY
Another basic rule of thumb when implementing pallet-handling robotics: Keep it simple.
Andy Lockhart, director of strategic engagement for global warehouse and logistics process automation company Vanderlande, says that when designing a pallet-handling robotics system, “you want to minimize the processes you [automate]. When you can create [an automated system] that focuses on one task—for example, AMRs delivering pallets from a high-bay [storage rack] directly to the palletizing cell—you can do that efficiently and effectively. When you ask the AMR to do this and this and this … you are adding risk of failure.”
Lockhart’s colleague Jake Heldenberg advises customers to first test their target processes via pilot programs within the warehouse or DC. Heldenberg is Vanderlande’s head of solution design, warehousing, North America.
“If AGVs or AMRs for pallet handling are interesting [to a customer], the best thing to do is pilot one or two in an existing DC,” he says, explaining that the process can help companies troubleshoot, understand integration timelines, and gauge ROI. But pilot programs can add expense to a project, making it unaffordable for some.
“If that’s the case, then the best advice is work with a vendor who has experience integrating [the technology],” Heldenberg says. “Use their experience to benefit your business. You won’t have the same hiccups and challenges you would with a less-experienced vendor.”
“While there have been some signs of tightening in consumer spending, September’s numbers show consumers are willing to spend where they see value,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said in a release. “September sales come amid the recent trend of payroll gains and other positive economic signs. Clearly, consumers continue to carry the economy, and conditions for the retail sector remain favorable as we move into the holiday season.”
The Census Bureau said overall retail sales in September were up 0.4% seasonally adjusted month over month and up 1.7% unadjusted year over year. That compared with increases of 0.1% month over month and 2.2% year over year in August.
Likewise, September’s core retail sales as defined by NRF — based on the Census data but excluding automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants — were up 0.7% seasonally adjusted month over month and up 2.4% unadjusted year over year. NRF is now forecasting that 2024 holiday sales will increase between 2.5% and 3.5% over the same time last year.
Despite those upward trends, consumer resilience isn’t a free pass for retailers to underinvest in their stores by overlooking labor, customer experience tech, or digital transformation, several analysts warned.
"The 2024 holiday season offers more ‘normalcy’ for retailers with inflation cooling. Still, there is no doubt that consumers continue to seek value. Promotions in general will play a larger role in the 2024 holiday season. Retailers are dealing with shrinking shopper loyalties, a larger number of competitors across more channels – and, of course, a more dynamic landscape where prices are shifting more frequently to win over consumers who are looking for great deals,” Matt Pavich, senior director of strategy & innovation at pricing optimization solutions provider Revionics, said in an email.
Nikki Baird, VP of strategy & product at retail technology company Aptos, likewise said that retailers need to keep their focus on improving their value proposition and customer experience. “Retailers aren’t just competing with other retailers when it comes to consumers’ discretionary spending. If consumers feel like the shopping experience isn’t worth their time and effort, they are going to spend their money elsewhere. A trip to Italy, a dinner out, catching the latest Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds films — there is no shortage of ways that consumers can spend their discretionary dollars,” she said.
Editor's note:This article was revised on October 18 to correct the attribution for a quote to Matt Pavich instead of Nikki Baird.
A real-time business is one that uses trusted, real-time data to enable people and systems to make real-time decisions, Peter Weill, the chairman of MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), said at the “IFS Unleashed” show in Orlando.
By adopting that strategy, they gain three major capabilities, he said in a session titled “Becoming a Real-Time Business: Unlocking the Transformative Power of Digital, Data, and AI.” They are:
business model agility without needing a change management program to implement it
seamless digital customer journeys via self-service, automated, or assisted multi-product, multichannel experiences
thoughtful employee experiences enabled by technology empowered teams
And according to Weill, MIT’s studies show that adopting that real-time data stance is not restricted just to digital or tech-native businesses. Rather, it can produce successful results for companies in any sector that are able to apply the approach better than their immediate competitors.
“ExxonMobil is uniquely placed to understand the biggest opportunities in improving energy supply chains, from more accurate sales and operations planning, increased agility in field operations, effective management of enormous transportation networks and adapting quickly to complex regulatory environments,” John Sicard, Kinaxis CEO, said in a release.
Specifically, Kinaxis and ExxonMobil said they will focus on a supply and demand planning solution for the complicated fuel commodities market which has no industry-wide standard and which relies heavily on spreadsheets and other manual methods. The solution will enable integrated refinery-to-customer planning with timely data for the most accurate supply/demand planning, balancing and signaling.
The benefits of that approach could include automated data visibility, improved inventory management and terminal replenishment, and enhanced supply scenario planning that are expected to enable arbitrage opportunities and decrease supply costs.
And in the chemicals and lubricants space, the companies are developing an advanced planning solution that provides manufacturing and logistics constraints management coupled with scenario modelling and evaluation.
“Last year, we brought together all ExxonMobil supply chain activities and expertise into one centralized organization, creating one of the largest supply chain operations in the world, and through this identified critical solution gaps to enable our businesses to capture additional value,” said Staale Gjervik, supply chain president, ExxonMobil Global Services Company. “Collaborating with Kinaxis, a leading supply chain technology provider, is instrumental in providing solutions for a large and complex business like ours.”
However, that trend is counterbalanced by economic uncertainty driven by geopolitics, which is prompting many companies to diversity their supply chains, Dun & Bradstreet said in its “Q4 2024 Global Business Optimism Insights” report, which was based on research conducted during the third quarter.
“While overall global business optimism has increased and inflation has abated, it’s important to recognize that geopolitics contribute to economic uncertainty,” Neeraj Sahai, president of Dun & Bradstreet International, said in a release. “Industry-specific regulatory risks and more stringent data requirements have emerged as the top concerns among a third of respondents. To mitigate these risks, businesses are considering diversifying their supply chains and markets to manage regulatory risk.”
According to the report, nearly four in five businesses are expressing increased optimism in domestic and export orders, capital expenditures, and financial risk due to a combination of easing financial pressures, shifts in monetary policies, robust regulatory frameworks, and higher participation in sustainability initiatives.
U.S. businesses recorded a nearly 9% rise in optimism, aided by falling inflation and expectations of further rate cuts. Similarly, business optimism in the U.K. and Spain showed notable recoveries as their respective central banks initiated monetary easing, rising by 13% and 9%, respectively. Emerging economies, such as Argentina and India, saw jumps in optimism levels due to declining inflation and increased domestic demand respectively.
"Businesses are increasingly confident as borrowing costs decline, boosting optimism for higher sales, stronger exports, and reduced financial risks," Arun Singh, Global Chief Economist at Dun & Bradstreet, said. "This confidence is driving capital investments, with easing supply chain pressures supporting growth in the year's final quarter."