Tier 4 Meeting Board

Phoenix has incorporated tiered meetings into the operation on every shift. Delivery, Warehouse 1st Shift, Warehouse 2nd Shift, and the Office team all have a daily Tier 1 meeting, usually at the start of the shift. These meetings are conducted by Leads or Supervisors and all shift associates attend the meeting.

Tier 2 meetings, held by Supervisors with their Leads, are also conducted daily, often more than once per day. Department Managers are conducting Tier 3 meetings, usually daily. These higher level meetings are held by Managers with their Supervisors and cover LEAN components and continuous improvement opportunities.

So what is this Tier 4 Meeting? This is a daily meeting with the Managers and the Director of Operations, a recap of the key performance indicators for the prior day. A 3' X 4' MDI board has been designed to record and review all the metrics. Trends are reviewed briefly, and the team makes certain that unfavorable trends have root cause analysis underway and countermeasures applied or soon on the way. Notes are made right on the board, making location performance very visual for all associates to see clearly and apply improvements.

Scanning Improves Accuracy

Phoenix has spent the past six weeks training associates and rolling out new processes for handling inbound freight. With over 10,000 different items in stock, it is easy to receive a product and lose it before it finally ends up it the correct warehouse location. Using technology, Phoenix has improved inventory accuracy through the addition of a carton tracking system using bar codes and scanners.

Using the new process, cartons arrive via semi-trailer and are unloaded. Products are received using the scanner (which immediately makes the item available for sale) and scanned to a pallet. Some items have ASN pallet tags (pallet ID bar code) which make receiving even faster! That pallet (whether built or ASN tagged) is moved and scanned to a drop zone. The pallet or individual cartons are then scanned to a specific warehouse location, at which time the system declares the product as "putaway" where it belongs! Every warehouse location available for storage of product has a unique barcode.

With these tools in place, every carton can be tracked from point to point as it moves from the receiving dock to the assigned warehouse location. If it is side tracked along the way, an exception report flagged the carton and notes where it was last scanned, making it easier to find. If an associate selects the wrong item, the wrong pallet, or tries to put something away in the wrong location, immediate feedback is provided by the hand held terminal. The associate can make the necessary adjustment and perform the function correctly.

In the next 60 days, we'll be adding scanning to our outbound processes. Since we already scan cartons at delivery, we'll have comeplete electronic tracking for items from receiving to delivery. The impact on inventory accuracy is expected to be significant. This is one example of how we are using technology with LEAN to improve our performance to customers!