Most warehouses run on technology that was invented in 1948: the barcode.
Barcodes are very good at telling you when something happened. But it’s not so good with what, why, and how.
But context matters. Especially today.
What’s actually happening in between those barcode scans?
Why does a forklift have scratches all over it at the end of a shift? Why did a move take 10 minutes longer to perform this time than it usually does? How did this product or building damage happen?
Without that visibility, you can’t improve. You’re stuck saying “I don’t know” after an incident occurs, pouring through hours of CCTV footage trying to maybe catch a glimpse of what happened, or telling people to “work faster” based on timestamp data, when in reality, it could be a broken process that needs improving.
Let’s take a look at a few real world examples of how logistics leaders are using OneTrack Warehouse Intelligence to get visibility into their operations and make data-driven improvements.
How Spartan Logistics fixed a dangerous warehouse process
A lot of warehouses have processes in place that make sense on paper. And because of that, no one thinks to question them. Everyone’s busy — why spend time fixing something that isn’t broken?
Lina Recker, Corporate Compliance Manager at Spartan Logistics, talked through an example of how their team discovered a dangerous process that turned out to be a leading cause of injuries and damages.
In this Spartan Logistics warehouse employees are tasked with opening and unloading rail cars.
Management was aware that rail cars were part of the day-to-day operations, but they didn’t realize the risks that were associated with it.
However, after working with OneTrack, Lina’s team started noticing a trend: a large portion of the impact alerts they were getting were coming from this rail car process.
“It was really eye opening how difficult it is to open a rail car door. Our employees weren't speaking up, they thought that that's how it was supposed to be. But now we’ve invested in rail car openers and developed better SOPs to help our employees be safer and more efficient.”
How Rinchem overhauled their phone use policy and empty program
For Melody Moore, Director of Quality and EHS at Rinchem, they didn’t realize anything was broken until they saw it themselves.
There are two very different examples here: Phone use and empties.
In this Rinchem facility, they allowed operators to use their phones as RF scanners. Makes sense on paper — why invest in separate equipment, when every operator has a phone?
However, what they found through OneTrack’s phone use alerts, was that operators were checking FaceBook, or texting, while operating their MHE.
That sparked Rinchem to develop more stringent policies around phones in the warehouse. It’s now forbidden to have a phone out on the lift, even if it’s being used as an RF unit.
Their empty policy was eye opening as well.
Rinchem handles hazardous chemicals, so they focus a lot on how their employees operate around and handle product.
While they were doing a good job with that, what they found was that employees were handling empties much more aggressively — and that was leading to damages and injuries.
After watching the footage, they’ve completely revamped their empty handling program, and doubled down on operator training to ensure that proper procedure is being followed — whether moving hazardous chemicals or empties.
Context matters in your warehouse operations
If you could see everything happening in your warehouses, what could you achieve?
Beyond knowing when something happened, or seeing a timestamp for a slow process, what if your team got alerted every time something happened in your warehouses that needed attention?
We believe that logistics leaders need deep visibility in order to do their jobs and to keep their warehouses running safely and efficiently. Because context matters.
Book a demo here to see how the platform works or check out how Hain Celestial uses OneTrack’s Warehouse Intelligence to reduce overall safety incidents by more than 80%.