Curt Sardeson's Blog

In addition to my 3Rs of a WMS implementation, I also believe there is a set of 3Ps.   Those are Picking, Paperwork, and Performance.

Picking – You must have efficient pick methods.  The software must work in your physical flow.   Picking should be easy to do and easy to audit.

Paperwork – Do not underestimate the value of good paperwork.  If you print it, it must be perfect.   Pay attention to the data you are asked to print on your documents.  Does your new system actually have a source for the data? Can the data be derived based on your processes?   We often find that information we are asked to put on a report or label does not exist in the WMS.    

Performance – if the system is slow or crashes nothing will matter.  No executive will tolerate his/her business performance being linked to the performance of the hardware or software.    Stress testing, tuning, monitoring, and good performance experts are needed in high volume warehouses.    Even low volume warehouses will have processes that occasionally will stress the system.   Also pay attention to data build up.  Many systems run great when they have little data, but put too many rows in a table and now a process that should take 0.6 seconds takes 7 minutes.

Recently I went on record saying that every successful WMS implementation I’ve been part of required special attention and focus to the 3Rs of WMS.  Those 3Rs in my mind are Receiving, Replenishment, and Reconciliation. 

Receiving – If you don’t get the inventory into the WMS correctly, nothing else matters.   Period.

Replenishment – If you have a warehouse that requires you replenish your stock to buildings, areas, pick faces, etc., you need to pay close attention to this area.  Your Order Cycle times are usually only as good as your ability to get inventory in the right place at the right time.

Reconciliation – This one usually surprises most people. Generally because most companies don’t see the value of Reconciliation until after the first “month end”.  You should plan to reconcile Inventory Position and Orders every 4 hours until you are comfortable that the system is working.  Then do it every day.   It will not hurt to also reconcile receipts, adjustments, or any interface you can programmatically monitor. 

I received this e-mail from one of the partners of Open Sky today:

Thought you might get a kick out of this.  I submitted my order to HP yesterday at 3:11 PM and received a confirmation email instantly.  Today when I got home, I was surprised to see a small HP box on my doorstep.  It shipped standard UPS ground…it should have taken at least 2 days…certainly I wasn’t expecting less than 24 hour turnover.  The label on the box showed a print date of 3:15 PM!  The turnaround time for the order from HPs online part store into their WMS with a pick sheet was FOUR MINUTES!  Also, the DC is in Louisville which is a one day point for UPS ground if its on the early truck which has to pickup by 4:30 PM.  My order cycle time had to be less than 75 minutes.  Not too bad for online order fulfillment!

While this order cycle time of 75 minutes is very impressive, I have seen it done before.    I have helped customers (who were running RedPrairie software) implement systems where we could indeed measure order cycle time in minutes.    When you combine good software and good automated practices, it really is not that difficult to have less than 2 hour order cycle times especially for Parcel and LTL shipments. 

What Order Cycle times are you getting from your WMS?

If you want to get your Order Cycle times into Minutes, or you don't even know your Order Cycle Time, go to the Open Sky website and use this form to contact us please.

Another service we are offering at Open Sky is a third party WMS Utilization Assessment or RedPrairie Audit.  We have done a couple of these now and we have been able to help our clients solve many issues and gain better understanding of the software.   Often we solve several problems during the visit with some simple configuration changes.   If you are interested in a third party assessment of your RedPrairie WMS or implementation, go to the Open Sky website and use this form to contact me please.

This year Open Sky has created formal training classes on common RedPrairie tools.    We do our training classes a little differently than you may be used to.  So far the feed back is fantastic.  We have received comments like this: "Not only do you learn how to use the tools, you learn why to use the tools."   If you are interested in these training classes go over to the Open Sky website use this form to contact me please.

Well this blog and AMR thinks companies like Manhattan and RedPrairie could be acquisition targets. 

http://sap.blogs.techtarget.com/2008/11/14/is-it-a-buyer%e2%80%99s-market-for-vendors/

If your company is looking to purchase a new WMS, or your first WMS, chances are you will do one of 3 things. Many of you will hire a consultant to come in and help you select a WMS. Others will talk to your network of contacts in your industry and see what they have. And finally some of you will just go to Google and put in WMS and try to sort it out yourself.

The first group will most likely be well served if they picked a good consultant (again check your network and see who others used). The second group may also do well as they are working with software that worked for someone like them (make sure your business is like the guys who you bet your selection on). But in the last group, those of you who are going to do this yourself, will soon find there are over 6.5 million pages to wade through on Google alone. And after you have read 6 pages, you will start to see that everyone’s feature list looks the same anyway, they all have great success stories, and no one will give you an indication of price (one exception here may be the hosted software guys).

For those of you who still insist on doing your own WMS selection, you will be well served to pick up a copy of Philip Obal’s book, Selecting Warehouse Software From WMS and ERP Providers (http://www.idii.com/sws/). I know Phill is a hands on guy and he is the consultant that many companies hire to help them select a WMS (including some of my clients). In addition to this book, the IDII website has other very helpful resources such as RFPs for WMS and TMS, Warehouse Optimization guides, etc. They are all priced right too.

To reach me use this form please.

I setup this blog a couple years ago mainly to explore some of the “Web 2.0” software that was out there. Of course this included blogs. It was not very difficult to come up with topics to post; however it was difficult to get passionate about posting often. One of the reasons I could not get passionate is because I was not following the advice that I have pasted to the top of my laptop: “Focus on only one thing with no distraction to get into The Zone!” (a quote I think I took from a David Allen book).

Since I could not get into my “Blog Zone” I ignored the task of blogging frequently. I have decided to repurpose this blog and move it from my personal interests in productivity, personal finance, time saving technology, gadgets, etc. to one that is centered on my own personal experience implementing Tier 1 Warehouse Management Systems (WMS). I believe that I can share some information that is of value to the public that in turn could return value to me in the form of a new relationship or contract (at least I’m honest about why I’m giving away good information!).

Let me tell you a little bit about my career. I started in Warehouse Management Systems in 1993 when my contract at Fisher Controls in Marshalltown IA was coming to a close. The company that had placed me at Fisher Controls also had a recruiting arm that was trying to place Software Engineers with a small 60 person company in Waukesha WI called McHugh Freeman & Associates. After several grueling technical interviews I landed the job. Eventually McHugh Freeman & Associates became McHugh Software International and finally it became what it is called today, RedPrairie.

During my career at MFA/MSI/RP I was fortunate to work with 4 different WMS software platforms, dozens of customers and multiple countries and continents. I held positions of Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, Project Leader, Project Consultant, Project Delivery Leader, and finally Senior Project Manager.

In early 2006, Francis Fong and I made the bold decision to venture out on our own. While we loved working at RedPrairie with the great people and great software, we wanted to offer some different things to clients and do things in a different way. Francis and I were big believers in Agile SCRUM and working with teams. We also could see our customers needed help beyond the borders of the WMS. With this vision we created The Open Sky Group, LLC and have never looked back. That is enough about me for now. Check back here for more helpful information in a couple of days.

To reach me use this form please.

I do complex software implementations for a living. For those of you who know what a “go-live” is like, you know they get crazy, stressful, and chaotic. I was very curious to see how well the GTD and Inbox Zero systems (and habits) would hold up for me under a go-live. The results were amazing!

Using Inbox Zero (a GTD-like system for your e-mail) I never had over a dozen e-mails to “process” in my Inbox. I did end up deferring about 25 items in my Action Needed folder until after the go-live was over. But the important thing is I never let anything fall through the cracks.

My physical inbox (paper, mail, etc.) did get about 4.25 inches high during the 2 week period where I worked 12 hours a day, every day. However it took less than 2 hours to process the Inbox and get current again.

I rely on Outlook Tasks to track my Next Actions lists and other lists. Those were wonderful to have during the go-live as I could do also do mini-weekly reviews whenever time permitted using Outlook or my Windows Mobile phone.

Something else that I did was to purchase some Staples 4X6 inch scratch pads to capture actions and projects as they came in. This was just faster than using Outlook Tasks due to the rapid nature of information coming in. One of the other team members noticed how “organized” I was using this low tech paper system to keep track of things. I handed out extra scratch pads to several of the team members the next day.

I was very interested to see if I could keep up with GTD during a go-live. I’m happy to report that this system is capable of working under stressful and chaotic periods. In fact I believe this system was a major contributor to my ability to rise to the occasion and stay relaxed and calm (most of the time!).

So many people risk all of their data by not having backups. I know business owners who have lost their accounting files, friends who have lost their digital media albums, and clients who have lost data that can never be replaced.

I’ve blogged about Groove before as a way to have some protection for your files if you use more than one computer. However I know there are lots of people who just use one computer. If you only use one computer, I have found a product that I’m very impressed with called Carbonite.

Carbonite is perfect for the single computer user because it will back up an unlimited amount of data for about $50/year. It runs in the background so you really don’t have to do anything. When you create or change a file it gets backed up automatically (UPDATE: you can now restore version of files as old as 90 days). The only glitch I have had is some file extensions (i.e. mpg) need to be “manually” marked for backup. Also note it is a designed limitation to not backup network drives (this is getting into commercial services which must to be priced different).

I have tested the restore process and it has been able to recover my files nicely. The great thing about Carbonite vs. an external USB hard drive is even if your home is destroyed, or burglars take all your equipment, you can still get your files back. Keep in mind hard drive recovery (if you still have it) can easily cost $500-$1500 for average consumer hard drives. Recently a client sent his hard drive to one of the better recovery services and even they were unable to restore the data. It still cost my client several hundred dollars just for the attempted recovery!

I have found that Groove and Carbonite play well together adding one more layer of backup protection to my critical files and data.

This tool runs well under Windows XP, works with Groove, and for only about $50/year for unlimited backup is priced right. If you are not backing up your files automatically then get this tool!