Keys to Unlocking Successful Operational Readiness

Labor shortages, booming product variety (SKU proliferation), and ever-evolving customer demands are forcing a critical shift. Automating your distribution processes, from pinpoint aspects to the entire supply chain, is no longer a future dream; it’s an immediate necessity. This requires a deep dive into your organization’s current state: infrastructure, staffing and skillsets. Operational readiness, the bedrock for a successful automation journey, is not just essential; it’s crucial to ensuring a robust plan, project execution and seamless integration.

FORTNA, with its extensive experience and expertise in warehouse operations, recently conducted a comprehensive survey among 100 team members, including executive leadership, project engineers, data scientists, project managers, product managers, and system integration specialists. We sought their unique perspectives on operational readiness across all organizational levels. This survey explored how our experts have firsthand experience with operational readiness and their insights into what makes automation projects genuinely successful.

In this FORTNA Insight, we will review operational readiness topics through the lens of our experts’ valuable vantage points, identify the three pillars of operational readiness, and discuss best practices and the pitfalls to avoid.

Operational Readiness Best Practices

Our survey covered many different subjects related to operational readiness; however, the FORTNA team was passionate about identifying best practices and how to institute them. After evaluating our experts’ answers, we found the top five operational readiness best practices to be:

1)  Transparent Communication

An integration manager for FORTNA had an interesting take on organizational communication. “There is no such thing as ‘need to know’ information regarding operational readiness. Any change will affect the operation in some way, so transparent and thoughtful communication is a must.”

This communication aims to foster an adoption environment and lessen resistance to new processes. By including all teams, there should be minimal surprises and anxiety for teams and help the operation team resist the urge to return to the old ways of doing things.

4)  Impactful Training

Respondents mentioned training beyond the classroom numerous times. This best practice involves customized training for the new system on not only the new equipment, technologies and software but also hands-on training on processes, device and scanner use, and worker safety. Our experts encouraged training from external sources to gain manufacturer and integration-level knowledge and internally driven training on operational processes, which can drive adoption and ownership.

5)  Readiness Checklist

Working with a supply chain partner like FORTNA, which has experience and expertise in integrating new automated solutions, a thorough and extensive checklist can guide the customer and partner to ensure that all tasks, tests and materials are checked off and ready for go-live. A supply chain partner that has experience in integration and automation will be able to design a detailed checklist to measure progress and needs.

Operational Readiness Pitfalls to Avoid

While identifying best practices, our team also provided details on pitfalls warehouse distribution operations want to avoid.

1)  Internal Benchmarking

At the beginning of an automation project, there is a temptation to perform the data gathering and benchmarking process internally instead of having a third-party partner like FORTNA do an operational assessment. While an organization will have strong knowledge and connection to the business, an unbiased examination of the operation, current processes, and equipment can unveil previously unrecognized shortcomings and opportunities for improvement. An assessment can confirm and challenge current beliefs and create a data-backed starting point for key performance indicators (KPIs) that can help measure success in the future.

3)  Reducing the testing timeline

As organizations see the new system approaching its go-live, there is a natural impulse to shorten testing and commissioning to get to go-live faster. Many of our experts have experienced this practice, often leading to issues that would have been found and remediated in a testing environment. When testing is rushed, easily fixed obstacles become compounded as they are now found and mitigated during production.

4)  Bringing in new employees and skill sets late in the project

Many of our on-the-floor engineers and project leaders recognized that organizations try to synch bringing new employees into the operation too close to the go-live date. This does not give them adequate time to get up-to-speed on all tasks and procedures and get comfortable with operating the new system. Bringing these new employees in earlier can pay dividends and lead to a more confident and ready-to-go operations team.

FORTNA Can Help

Designing and creating an automated solution for your operation is only one facet of automating a distribution warehouse. Understanding the facility, staff, and infrastructure flexibility and limitations can be just as important as the needed solutions and improvements. Partner with FORTNA to gain access to our team of engineers, project professionals and integration experts to ensure that your business is operationally ready for automation.