Meet Productivity Demands Through Better Efficiency
In today’s competitive business climate, doing more with less has become standard operating procedure. Warehouse managers, specifically, are expected to move and store inventory at peak efficiency and lowest cost while simultaneously dealing with increased volume, smaller order sizes and workforce issues due to absenteeism, illness and an overall lack of qualified, experienced candidates.
Adjusting to these expectations can limit time to plan and implement quality initiatives or examine and refine processes that could ultimately increase throughput, safety and productivity. With these pressures, on top of the multitude of daily concerns and issues that arise in a warehouse environment, it makes sense to capture data and look for specific improvement opportunities. Your forklift fleet can help.
When equipped with a telematics system, your forklift fleet can capture a wide range of operational data. Figuring out which pieces of data are most meaningful and important to helping you increase efficiency can be challenging. Many operations turn to a telematics provider to configure and install their system. Still, they don’t take advantage of the provider’s expertise in helping to identify, capture and interpret the data that will provide the most value.
Through a process of reviewing your operation, coaching you in addressing specific target areas, and repeating this cycle continuously to measure success and adjust to new challenges, your telematics provider can help you derive more value from the data you capture. With more than a decade of experience with the InfoLink® Operator and Fleet Management system, Crown has leveraged its experience across a wide range of applications and requirements to create a formalized approach to this consultation process. It’s called InfoLink Performance Services.
Performance reviews can help you look at how you’ve been using telematics and how you might change your processes and even your environment to increase efficiency. Are you assigning the right forklifts to the right tasks? Are you assigning the right operators to the right forklifts? Are you fully utilizing your fleet or is there idle time that is costing you productivity? An InfoLink Performance Review will help identify these gaps and provide recommendations to address them.
Performance coaching takes things further by leveraging best practices for improvement in specific focus areas that you define in the review process. This can include operator and forklift efficiency, as well as safety compliance and impact management. InfoLink Performance Coaching will help you understand how the recommendations developed in the review process can be implemented and measured in your application through step-by-step instruction and professional guidance.
Performance planning continues improvement with ongoing cycles of reviews and coaching to ensure your identified focus areas are addressed and perhaps altered as you make progress or face new challenges. InfoLink Performance Planning helps ensure that your operational goals, and the steps you take to address them, remain relevant as your business evolves.
Properly utilizing telematics data is one of the best ways to increase efficiency. A properly configured system and process to ensure that you are capturing the right data can help free up more time to spend on other warehouse concerns that consume your day. Increasing productivity in the face of other challenges may not require the additional resources that simply may not be available. By taking a fresh look at operator and forklift fleet management and utilizing the full potential of your telematics system, you may be surprised what your team is capable of accomplishing. Contact your local Crown dealer if you’re interested in learning more.