OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT CONCERNS SURROUNDING THE INWARD GOODS AT GILMOURS

Dmitry Yakimenko

Introduction

Inward Goods operations are an integral part of Gilmours daily work.

Each and every product sitting on the shelf in Cash and Carry Department arrives through the Inwards Goods.

The process of receiving of goods should be put in the most right and efficient way.

Work Flow Chart

Enter phone delivery requests from supplier

The representative may not know the order number or may tell the wrong order number – as there is no validation check. Also the procedure may be time consuming

Recommendation: Automation of Booking Procedure

Enter phone delivery requests from supplier

Delivery vehicle arrives/ Unloading the vehicle

Truck may come at time different to the arranged one. In actual fact no one check the arrival time with the arranged time.

Due to the failure to come in time or due to the delay in unloading several trucks may come on the yard at the same time. As the result the work load of the Inward Goods may be very uneven - occurrence of the long queue on the public road which leads to the yard.

Delivery vehicle arrives/ Unloading the vehicle

Recommendations: To monitor the arrival time against the

booking schedule and do the statistic of arrivals for different orders and different trucks – explanatory work with suppliers;

Send the truck back or reschedule its arrival for the later time;

The implementation of automatic booking system.

The product is not in the PO (purchase order). Time consuming visit to the buyers’ office to set up the issue (5-20 minutes);

No indication whether the pallet was scanned or not – unscanned pallet may be transferred to storage area;

Handheld barcode scanners often frozen up during the receiving process. No efficient system to report the bugs;

Receiving of loose pallets – time consuming procedure.

Receiving the load with the help of handheld barcode scanners

Recommendations The product is not in PO:

Use an email to send the requests to the buyer; To configure SAP to send the request from the

handheld scanner directly to the buyer. Absence of indication for scanned pallets:

Pocket size sticky labels of the following format

Receiving the load with the help of handheld barcode scanners

Pallet scanning is completed. Ready for collection

Recommendations Freezing barcode scanners:

Regular service of the equipment (preventative maintenance) and update equipment on the expiry of the service life;

To examine the system of maintenance reports where every maintenance request is assigned with the order number;

Loose pallets: To order to ensure the turnover of goods not

less than 4 weeks. Establish the lower level of stock on hand.

Receiving the load with the help of handheld barcode scanners

Rece

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Check each product against the delivery docket

Manukau: Never put the amount of goods into the

system before they manually count each item. While checking the product they crossing out the lines which are actually received.

Mt Roskill: ‘Blind’ scanning. While receiving the goods

Inwards people scan each item they observe on the pallet. After scanning is complete they check the list of actually received goods printed by SAP.

Stamp the order

Manukau: When receiving is done, order is checked

with SAP and all issues are fixed the Inwards worker stamps the order document with the date when the order was received.

Mt Roskill: No stamp and all complete orders stapled

with the original delivery docket from supplier regardless of issues occurred during the receiving (under/over supply)

Stamp the order

Mt Roskill Manukau

Stacks of documents

Write down order information into Summary Sheet

Distinguish feature of Manukau receiving process is an existence of special Summary Sheet for the information about all the orders in the following format: [CRN/None – Name of

Supplier – Order Number – Number of Lines received – Number of lines MOS].

Numerical data for Mt Roskill and Manukau branches

Mt Roskill Manukau

1. Number of Inwards People

1. 5 2.51

2. Area of Inwards zone (m2)

2. 426 70

3. Number of hoists operated

in zone

3. 2

(1 – fork hoist,

1 – reach truck)

1

4. Average number of trucks

served daily2

4. 25 20

5. Average number of pallets

received3

5. 170 120

6. Working hours

6:30am – 3:00pm

(8 hours)

7:00am – 5:00pm

(9.5 hours)

7. Number of computer work

stations

6. 34 1

8. Number of product types

discharged (Frozen / Chilled /

Dry / Tobacco)

7.

25 36

1 In actual fact there are only two people in Manukau who exclusively work as the Inwards staff but also there are some assistance in receiving from people from Frozen Goods department and Aisles supervisors. 2 The day to day variation is quite huge; the average number is based on the approximate calculation and on interviews of Inwards workers. 3 For Manukau figure is based on approximate calculation – 3 pallets per truck in average + around 60 pallets in Foodstuffs truck. 4 Only 1 is used for SAP where 2 others mostly for sending e-mails. 5 Frozen / Chilled stuff in Mt Roskill is received by workers of the Freezer. 6 In Manukau tobacco (as well as phone cards) is received by the Tobacco Department supervisor.

Mt Roskill Manukau

1. The number of pallets per person 34 48

2. Minutes per pallet receiving 2.82 4.75

3. Minutes per person per pallet1 14.11 11.88

4. Area of Inwards zone per pallet (m2) 2.5 0.58

1 Assuming that the Inwards person spent all the working time exclusively on receiving.

Numerical data for Mt Roskill and Manukau branches

The number of pallets per person in Mt Roskill is considerably less than in Manukau - the workforce in Mt Roskill branch is underutilised .

Due to the longer working hours of Manukau branch, one Manukau Inwards worker spend more time for receiving a pallet than Inwards worker at Mt Roskill.

Due to the huge size of the inwards zone at Mt Roskill, the area per a pallet there is more than 4 times bigger than in Manukau.

Human resources

Recommendations: Best practice seminar and trainings. Conduct

one off seminar on best practices. This seminar may involve the lecture of SAP people about the usage of the system. To conduct the training on cohesion and team spirit.

Exchange of the staff from different branches. Temporarily swap people from similar departments of different branches during the sharing experience program.

Maintain a multicultural environment within one branch.

INNOVATIVE IDEAS SHOULD KNOW NO BOUNDARIES! THANK YOU =)Dmitry Yakimenko