Our shipping and receiving department is the busiest department in our plant. I've spent a lot of time to observe why our inventory accuracy is low. This slide show is based on some data I gathered and my opinion. This slide show has been presented to the manager. If you have a better suggestions or idea for the improvement, I would like to know about it. Thanks.

1. The Journey to Continuous Improvement
(Kaizen)
Continuous improvement is a
special or some see it as a “pain
in the neck project” until it
becomes part of daily attitude.
“Continuous improvement is not about the
things you do well. Continuous
improvement is about removing the things
that get in the way of your work. The
headaches, the things that slow you down,
that’s what continuous improvement is all
about.” – Bruce Hamilton

2. The Concept of Continuous Improvement
(Kaizen)
• The concept behind continuous improvement
is:
– Changes are made and continually improved upon
– Although perfection will never be achieved, the
goal is to continue reaching for it through small
improvement
– No idea is too small. No area should be
untouched. No process is sacred
Note: Problems are not scary, but the unknown problems that we can’t
see.

3. First Step
• Adjust
• Plan
Learn from
what happens
and turn that
into further
action
• Check
Hardest part
Talk to the
team, listen to
them. Identify
the problem
(ask the 5
why)
Closely
monitor and
analyze what
is going on in
the
experiment
Run the
experiment
• Do

4. Emotion vs. Fact
• From time to time, when we don’t see the
result we want or the process just isn’t what
we plan for, we get emotional. I think it’s ok
because we are human. But, sometimes it is
difficult for us to interpret the fact when we
get emotional. Maybe, it’s time for us to show
the fact that based on the actual data.
Lesson learned: Emotion gets us nowhere.

5. 100% customer satisfaction = deliver the
right product to the right place at the right
time. (JIT – just in time)
customers nowadays don’t like to stock up
their inventory; instead, they like to place
small orders (LTL) with minimum lead
times.
Cost
Saving
100%
customer
satisfaction
Company’s goal: Increase revenue. Reduce
cost (labor cost, material cost,
transportation cost, operational cost, etc.)
Company’s goal seems to be simple – cost
reduction. How do we reach the goal with
limited resources? Well, we might want to
do things a little differently. We might
need to focused on some issues we
thought are to small to make an impact.

6. An example of preventable mistake
that we should ask the 5 why
1. Why ship when it says
customer pick up.
2. Why don’t you know (if the
answer is “I don’t know)
3. Why wasn’t you trained?
(If the answer is “Well, I
wasn’t train to look at that
part)
4. Why no one train you? (If
the answer is “because
nobody trained me”)
5. Why don’t they have time?
(If the answer is “they don’t
have time”)
Stop right there and go get a
trainer to train him!

7. Shipment Error
When an error like this happened again
although we have the help from the
scanner reader, that raises a question: Is
it the machine error or the human
error? If it’s a machine error, it’s not that
difficult to fix. But, if it’s a human error,
that would be more questions to ask. If
it is a lack of focus error, where the
human focus is being used and reduce
the need for that focus? In other words,
there may be waste in the process
requiring undo focus of the human that
results in shipping errors.

8. Communication Flow Between Production
Assistant and other departments
Information such as Line Item Fill Rate, Shipment
Completion, coming up promotions should be
shared with shippers.

9. Training
•
•
•
•
Reverse PGI
Run the ATP without having TMS to link orders
How to tell if orders are linked
Actual GI Date MUST match Plan GI date
(explain why it is important)

10. Standardize Processes
Standardized work is the foundation of
continuous improvement (Kaizen)
• Should we identified locations for completed and incomplete
paper work
• Should the lead train shippers how to pick and load so we
have an idea of the rate (time) to build a pallet
• Should all shippers train for export loads so we don’t have to
worry the door of the container won’t be able to close
Note: It does sound like a pain, but when we do things the same way, I
believe the process will be smoother.

11. Daily Huddle
Constant incremental
improvements – “I can do it”
“Where does my
daily work fit in the
‘big picture’?”

12. Week of November 19, 2012
44% is LTL not included the customer pickup.
This information is from VL06, orders that PGI
between Nov. 19 and Nov. 23. We have only
three working days on that week.
Continue…

13. Week of November 19, 2012
Based on the information on previous slide, this is what we need for the outbound
loading ONLY.
In these three days of working week, we have average of 13.3 TL and 13.3 LTL, not
including customer pickup, and inbound delivery.
Takt Time = available working time per day/required time per day
(We use this in the production line for downtime, I believe)
Assumed we had 6 shippers for these 3 working days.
480 (minutes per day) – (15*2) – (30) = 420 available per day * 6 = 2520
minutes
13.3 TL required 798 minutes (estimate)
13.3 LTL required 399 minutes (estimate
Total for both TL and LTL per day = 1197 minutes
Total available = 2520 minutes – 1197 (required) = 1323 minutes
What do we do with the remaining of 1323 minutes?
Average 3.675 hours per shipper
Continue…

14. Shipping Warehouse Activities
Mandatory or optional? If mandatory,
need to do it everyday no matter how
busy.
•
•
•
•
5 S – 30 minutes daily
Cycle Count – 20 minutes (When needed)
Huddle – 10 minutes daily
Pallet Labels – 20 minutes per order (Napa,
Walmart, Kmart, Amazon, OSH, Kubota, Sears,
Carquest, just to name a few)
• Plant Meeting – 1 hour (When needed)
• Picking orders – Average 4 hours for a TL

15. 7 deadly wastes
1. Defects -- Data entry errors.
2. Overproduction – This is something we can’t
control because we don’t decide what to produce.
3. Inventories – Our inventory is pretty good so far,
not an issue.
4. Unnecessary motion of employees
5. Transport and handling of goods
6. Waiting
7. Confusion – missing or misinformation.

16. Input, Process and Output
Input
Off
Picking loading
5 S
1. Demurrage Charges
2. Over Time
3. Shipment Errors might
occurred
4. Messy warehouse
5. Frustrating employees
Is the bottleneck avoidable? Maybe
not. But, we might be able to
minimize it, at least.
1. When we have less working days,
plan ahead.
2. Minimize or no export loads when
Holiday Seasons
we have less working days
Unplanned time off
3. Communicate with CSRs
Unforeseen promotions 4. Determine how many orders can
we do a day.
5. Determine how many workers we
need.
Output
6. Determine how many hours of OT
needed.
Process

17. Losing Orders
From time to time, shippers won’t be able to locate an order that
was given by the Production Assistant. How do we prevent this
from happening again?
•At the end of the day, production
assistant should print out a report
for all the orders created on that
day and pass it to the lead in
shipping department. This will make
sure that the Production Assistant
did print out the order.
• When an order pass to a shipper
for picking, it should be record on a
piece of paper. That way, we clearly
know who has which order. This will
definitely help us to locate an order
quickly.

18. As you can see the process takes a long time. But, if we could schedule the
shipment and control the cut off date, I believe the lead time will be shorten.

19. Feb 4 – Feb 8
A glance of the regular 5 working days week.

20. Continue Feb 4 – Feb 8
35
34
35
30
25
Inbound
Truck Load
20
17
16
Export
LTL
15
Will Call
UPS
10
4
3
5
0
Inbound
Truck Load
Export
LTL
Will Call
UPS
Note: We have two hours to load a truck. After that, we will be charged for waiting.
UPS Freight is exception.