SPRING 2022

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THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK
Robert Footlik
Robert B. Footlik, PE is a retired Professional Industrial Engineer. With over 50 years’
experience as a Warehouse and Logistics Consultant to a wide variety of clients including
Fastener Distributors, Bob has a wealth of valuable information for our industry and he is
willing to share it. While Footlik & Associates is now closed, his expertise is still available
to his friends and our readers. For friendly advice, a second opinion or just to start a
conversation, he can be reached at robert@footlik.net.
TRUST BUT VERIFY
Since ancient times, long before the pyramids
of Egypt were built, and in every culture storage and
distribution has relied on a system of control with one
individual taking a tally and another verifying the count.
We are still doing this today, but should we?
Everyday customers, staff and you trust the warehouse
workers to be efficient, accurate and reliable. If this trust
is real then every order is on time, filled properly and
100% perfect in every respect. Everything in a service
business is built on this trust and generally it is not
misplaced. But have you ever considered how this can be
turned into a more efficient way to operate?
Follow the path of a typical “line” on an order. The
picker travels to the stock location, removes the item
from a shelf, places it on a cart, travels eventually to
a checking station where the goods are examined for
accuracy then the cart or product goes to a packing table
where it is placed into a carton, paperwork is provided,
the carton is sealed, labeled and common carrier shipping
labels are affixed.
All this is just for a full case or box count item.
For many Fastener Distributors it gets even worse
if the materials have to be weigh counted. Under
typical warehouse operating scenarios a bin is removed
from the shelf, taken to a scale, counted and then
returned (eventually/hopefully) to the right location in the
warehouse.
The end result is that 90% to 95% of the time the
picker is walking and then the goods are being handled
multiple times. While materials handling equipment to
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLE
move the product to the picker exists, it is expensive
initially, complex to maintain and often inflexible in terms
of throughput and cube utilization. Before investing in
fancy solutions why not build on what you already have?
Instead of all these steps, a simple solution is
instituting “Pick-Pack” where the goods are removed
from a shelf (preferably using a batched order scheme),
placed in a box, sealed and shipped. The savings in
time and effort can be enormous with a Return On
Investment (ROI) measured in days not years. The
concept seems simple, so why have so few Fastener
Distributors embraced it?
The most common reason is that management just
“doesn’t trust the warehouse staff to get things right.”
The only way to eliminate this fear is to start with your
beliefs and then develop a trustworthy program a piece at
a time.
“Trust But Verify”
One excellent approach is to use well proven statistical
sampling techniques to “know” what is going on. For an
academic understanding of how this works search the
Internet using the term “Acceptance Sampling.”. A more
pragmatic approach is to accept that for most distribution
operations a 4% sample of the finished, packed outbound
orders will provide about a 97% level pf confidence that
what is observed is “truth.” This is done by cutting open
random boxes at random times and verifying all possible
problems and perfection using criteria the same way your
customer would view the order.
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