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Have you ever wondered how Special Projects are handled?Well, you can learn all about the process and guidelines from Clara Tagliafico, our Head of Special Projects! Our experts provide end-to-end fulfillment solutions for special project needs - no matter how complex. From inventory availability to shipping instructions, our on-site and remote teams dedicate their time and energy to ensuring your special project requests are fulfilled accurately and on time.Join us now as we take you through the step-by-step procedures of processing orders, from reviews to tracking, packing, and managing inventory shortages.Discover the secrets of successful special project order fulfillment!
As a ShipHero fulfillment customer when you have special projects, special projects are wholesale, FBA, kitting and prep, the way we process it is first Clara's team takes the first review of the project. So Clara, why don't you explain what happens when we get a special project submitted by a customer? Well, the customers submit a ticket with the special project request, the special project type, and most of the times an order in place already, and with the instructions on what has to be done. So once our team gets the ticket, we log that to the warehouse, making sure that the order is already mapped and ready to be worked on, and we send them the instructions along with any type of labels that they need to add to the order and all the specifics that we have to make sure it gets done for the warehouse to work on and have it ready as soon as possible. So if Clara's team reviews and missing information, her team comes back to you with the missing requirements, and they're the gatekeeper of making sure nothing gets to the warehouse until the warehouse will have all the things they need. Once the warehouse works on it, let's just talk through briefly sort of what that process is. Let's use a wholesale order as an example. So what do you need from the customer to be submitted for us to process the wholesale order, and then what do we do in the warehouse to get that order out? We need as much information as possible as to how the order is going to ship, if it's going to be small parcel, if it has to be packed a certain way, if the customer is going to provide labels, if they are going to schedule freight or if we have to do it for them. So as much information as possible is the best. And once we have all that, we make sure that the order in place is correct. And if something's missing, we communicate with the customers to have that fixed if there's something they have to fix or if there's something on our end that we will need to adjust or change. And once we get all the information and the warehouse has all the information, we work on it and we send the final result. If the customer needs a specific box counts or pallet counts, weights and things like that, we let them know so they can complete the process on their side if they're going to provide labels and things like that. Right. So after we're done in the warehouse, Clara's team will reach out. If it's required booking freight with all the information you need to book the freight, then that data comes back and the warehouse dispatches it. Let's talk about the process in middle. So after the order gets sent to the warehouse, you have a really tight process to ensure that there's no missing information or missing product before they get started. So the process is the inventory team has a list of every item moving for the order. They go, they grab those items off the pallet racks usually, the overstock, wherever it is, they transfer it to a WO location is what we call it, which is a one-time use barcode or a license plate to track that item so that there's zero time where the product's moving and not tracked. Those WOs also have a specific color, so it's easy for us to track. Then those products are physically moved to sort of a special projects warehouse. Exactly. Which is like a designated area which only the special projects team works on. They transfer from the WO to the special projects location, right? And then at that point the special project teams starts their job. It's no longer the inventory team's job. It's a projects team where they pack and they follow the instructions. Exactly. And if there's any discrepancy or shortage where the inventory team can't move the full product, that's when the inventory team would reach out to you and say, "Okay, it's short. We don't have enough stuff. Something's damaged." You would reach out to that customer. I will let the customers know so they can make the proper adjustments. So any tips for our customers who are putting in special projects to make it so that their orders get out more quickly and with minimal back and forth? Yeah. Well first of all, I would check that all the inventory that the order is going to be asking for is actually available. And if the customer has their inventory spread across warehouses, they have to make sure that if an order is going to ship only from one warehouse, that the product is actually there and not just the total that we have within our network. And then we need to know how the order is going to ship. Because one thing is if the order is going to ship small parcel and we can just box it up and have it ready, or if it's going to ship on pallets where we need to add pallet labels or have a certain [inaudible 00:04:49] for the pallets or weight limits and things like that. Right. Yeah. So being compliant is always a lot of work. It's a challenge, expensive to get wrong, so we can only be compliant based on the information we get. And if we don't get the full information that back and forth means that shipment might wait an extra couple of days, which none of us want. Exactly. Thinking about peak season, what are you thinking about and what can a customer do to best prepare to make sure that their projects get done during peak? Well, the best thing is that they provide us with as much information as possible when submitting the special project request. So we don't have to go through all the back and forth with questions on how they're going to have it shipped or when it's going to be picked up and when it has to be ready for us. So I would say give us enough time in advance, like a reasonable timeframe to prepare the order, because it's not going to be feasible to ship a wholesale order that maybe it's like a significant amount of pallets overnight. So I would say give us time in advance and as much information as possible to have the project ready and we can have it done smoothly. And you should know that not only do we have great teams on the floor doing special projects in all our buildings, we also have an amazing remote team that Clara runs that has great continuity and knows what's going on across the warehouses to ensure that your special projects get done correctly and on time. Yes. Thank you. You're welcome.
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Take a peek inside ShipHero’s Jacksonville warehouse with GM Logan Bates and CEO Aaron Rubin.Learn how to create an optimal operating system to improve customer satisfaction with this Warehouse Operating System Series episode.Find out why JAX relies on ShipHero's WMS for bulk shipments and single-item batch picking, as well as the importance of balancing cost per package and meeting service level agreements.Follow Logan's expert advice and get tips on managing three shifts daily with trained personnel and state-of-the-art equipment.Unlock your warehouse's potential and join us for this amazing journey!
You're going to be given challenges every day out in warehousing, and warehousing is never going to be perfect no matter what you try to do. And so, just being able to adapt and to learn from the failures and the wins that you acquire through the years is what's going to help. You want to be able to have all the negativity just bounce off of you and just grow from it. Hey, I am here today with Logan Bates, the GM of our Jacksonville facility. We're going to talk about how to run a warehouse really, really well. And, Logan's an excellent warehouse manager. So Logan, first off, how old are you? 26 years old. And, you have how many people reporting to you? About 60, 61, 62. So, that's pretty impressive. So, can you talk us through how you started in this business, and how you got to where you are today running the whole building? So, I started seven years ago. 19, ripe old age- 19 years old- ... of 19- Yes sir. I worked with Rob. Rob helped mentor and develop me and just helped me learn the whole logistics side of it and the Ecommerce side. And then, we got into the fulfillment. He had a couple buddies that he knew through his Masterminds and then we brought them in as clients, and we started fulfilling for them. So, that's it. That's basically you only job you've ever had is running a warehouse with Rob? Yes, sir. Started it with Rob and then we started using ShipHero in 2016. And ever since 2016, we've just been learning the WMS. Yeah. I think you guys were number one. Or, you were, if not the first 3PL within the first three months of us offering 3PL, providing our SaaS product to 3PL, before that was just brands. So, thank you for that, appreciate that. Yes, sir. You guys help us along. So running 60 people, that's a lot. What are the challenges? What's the hardest part about running this building and running the people in this building? The first part of it was the learning side, and that was the personalities. Dealing with different personalities and people from different cultures, you take in a lot, and it's wonderful because you get to meet new people. You get to work with new people. Everyone has a different story, and everyone has a different place where they come from. My favorite was a lot of the people who come in from the foreign countries. We had a couple that came from Cameroon, a couple from the South America- I remember that. French speaking, right? Yes, sir. And so, we like to take on the challenge of learning the different languages and stuff like that. And inside the warehouse, especially in the fulfillments, it's kind of easy. You learn certain aspects, the totes or carts or just everything gets repetitive, but then you start learning it in their language and easier ways to communicate with them. But, I like to take on that challenge. You never know what someone's going through at the end of the day, and they also help you develop as a person as you can help develop them when they come into the United States. Yeah, no, it's super rewarding, and I think you've done a really good job of it in this building. Yeah, so that was the first part was just dealing with the personalities and then came to the workloads. You want to run it lean. You want to be a lean warehouse and so you want to make everything as efficient as you can. And so, early on ShipHero offered that with the many features in the beginning was like bulk shipping, picking. We were picking, before we were using ShipStation, you're picking off a sheet of paper and such. And now, we moved on and we're now using electronic picking. And so, the efficiencies have gotten better. And then as we grew, the ship yard, WMS grew and so we started to be molded by the system itself. Yeah, you guys did a great job of using the process and helping us frankly refine the process of how we build the software to... Because if the software doesn't match the process, we all know it doesn't work. Let's talk some more about what you think about as the GM of the building. So, I'm going to guess it's six letters. C-P-P-S-L-A. Yes. Is that- Yes. Explain what that means. This is the main... The CPP is going to be like your cost for a package. That's going to be your labor divided by the amount of packages we're shipping out. And so, we want to maintain the lowest number that we can while also meeting that SLA. So, there's a perfect merriment between the CPP and the SLA itself. You don't want to make your CPP go so high to where you're missing or you're hitting the SLAs and your CPP go super high. But, you also don't want to miss SLA and then your CPP is super low. And so, you want to try to tie everything in and just have the perfect merriment between the two. And, how does utilizing temps as well as, I know we do a lot of temp to hire in this building. How do you use that to help you hit your SLAs while managing your CPP in a business where we all know it's not flat all year, right? Q4, when we have big customers that have big drops, demand can double or more. So, how do you think about managing your labor in what we all know is a pretty dynamic industry? Yeah, you could never really hit the projected values right on top of the head, but you can always have an educated guess. And so, bringing in the temps gives you that flexibility. Our heaviest days are going into our Mondays and Tuesdays and so that's when you want to bring in, you look for the temp side. You bring them in for a day or two, then you can kind of move on from them as you need them. You can also do the daily temps where you can just bring in temps for a certain day and then you don't have to bring them back again. The daily temps are helpful for during peak season. When you're going into peaks, you want to have that dynamic. So if you have a lot of callouts or someone who is not here or you need more help, like unloading trucks, that's where you'll go into and grab the daily temps. And, I assume daily temps, you're not training them how to pick pack, replan. You're probably giving it more tasks that are less computer oriented, right? What are the tasks you would typically give- Correct- ... to a day temp? So, your day temps are going to be more your manual labor, lifting up the boxes, unloading the truck, moving of the pallets, or even just picking up garbage around the warehouse, boxes, helping the packers out. Basically, where they can help everyone run more efficiently. And then, when you're thinking about how many people you need, I know we run multiple shifts, so what are the shifts we run, and how do you staff those different shifts? So currently, we're running three shifts. Our first shift is going to be a 7:00 to 3:30. That's Monday through Friday. Our second one is going to be a 3:30 to 12:00, Monday through Friday. And then, our third shift is our weekend. Our weekend is now going to four days during peak season, which is going to be a 7:00 to 5:30 shift. And so, is that a 4/10, 4 days a week- It's going to be four days a week. It's going to be Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. So, you're going to try to hit the heaviest days of them all. Got it. Yeah, the four tens, if you can make it work, it's always helpful because you get the labor when you need it and then people get that 40 hours. Some people really like the 4/10. So, let's walk a bit, and let's talk about night shift and then how you decide what work happens when dealing with replan, dealing with fixing inventory issues. So, our night shift is going to be a little bit built up with more of our inventory team and our problem solving team. Like I said earlier, the first shift was more based on the outbound. And so, your second shift is going to do more of your cleanup of your SLA orders or anything that is kind of straggling along, need a little bit more extra problem solving as well as getting your replan for the next day. And so, we focus a lot on the inventory in the evening shift. So when we come in the mornings, we're ready to rock and roll and start hitting the orders from the start. So if someone's thinking about scaling up their warehouse, growing their team, when should they think about adding second shift, if they only have one shift right now? I think it's going to come down to where your daily volume is. If you get to a point where your daily volume, it's exceeding your team size, and you're missing a little bit on that SLA. The SLA is what you promised to the clients, and you're making sure that the orders are getting out in a timely manner. And so, if you have stragglers or orders that are still sitting and waiting, coming in the following morning, that's kind of when you want to start looking into that second shift or replan. You don't want slow starts in the morning. You want to come in, you want to rock and roll because that first hour, first hour or two of your shift is what's going to make that shipping day. Right. Okay. And, we probably pay more for weekend or second shift hourly than we do- Correct, yes sir. So, what's the reason we don't just put 20 more people on the day shift at the lower price versus adding a night or a weekend shift? What's the advantage that pays for itself on adding that night and weekend shift? Management. You add X amount of people to a shift, you want to be able to manage them properly. But, you don't want to have to bring in extra managers to dedicate them to running that first shift. And so, when you're doing nights, you do pay a little bit more of a premium, but there's a little bit less going on. And so, you're able to more focus on one or two things. So if you want to focus on the replan, then you can spend that time working on replenishment. You're not really worried about hitting that SLA or getting the orders out the door because the trucks have already left. Right. So it's more focused and more you're not stepping on top of each other. Correct. Replan has a little more time, a little more space when there's not 50 other people in the building? Correct. You can be a little bit more detailed. Basically, you get into the ins and outs of certain items that you wouldn't be able to tackle during the day with all the chaos. And then, this building's about 130,000 square feet. What equipment do we have in terms of forklifts, turret trucks, ePickers? So currently right now, we have a turret truck. We also have a ePicker, which is just a man-up with no pallet behind it or anything like that. And then, we also use a order picker. The order picker is the one where you're going to have the pallet behind you, and it's a man-up system, so you can go up to the higher parts of the racking and grab your items and place it on the pallet with you. The pallet travels with you compared to the ePicker. And then, we also have a counterbalanced forklift. And, which one do you use for replan? Re-plan, currently we're using the ePicker. We also use the order picker. Now, when it comes to our bulk quarters or our bulk items, we will use the turret truck. The turret truck can fit down a 76-inch aisle. Right, okay. Yeah, so it's good for the very narrow aisles. So, when you have a, let's say, a bulk pull and then you also have replan, have wholesale, is there a different operator dedicated to each of those tasks or do you have the same operator gets the different QR codes and has different tasks? This is a wholesale pull. This is a bulk pull. So, we have the same operator. The same operators will do all the tasks, but we also have backup operators just in case we need a little bit more help in that area. But usually, we do run the same operators that just bounce between all the tasks basically. And then, 2023 has been a really good year. What lessons have you learned to help run this building really well? Just being able to adapt and improvise. You're going to be given challenges every day out in warehousing, and warehousing is never going to be perfect no matter what you try to do. And so, just being able to adapt and to learn from the failures and the wins that you acquire through the years is what's going to help. You want to be able to have all the negativity just bounce off of you and just grow from it. Yeah, JB Sauceda says, "We're in the exception handling business," so if you take every issue too personally, you let it bother you too much, take it home with you, it's a really tough business. Because, we're only here to fix problems. If we didn't have problems, we wouldn't need managers. So yeah, it could be a mentally health challenging business sometimes because there's a lot happening with a lot of time pressure and cost pressure. That really makes a lot of sense to me. Let's change gears. What's your favorite feature or favorite part of the ShipHero, WMS? So, I have a couple, well, I think one of the major ones is going to be bulk shipping. Bulk shipping is super profitable and super efficient if you're inside the warehouse. You have a customer that runs the sale, and they're doing a big sale on let's just say phone charges or phone cases, and they have a thousand orders come in. There's a high possibility that those a thousand orders could be all bulk shipped at one time. And so, you have it picked by one person. You can also then use QR code picking for the batches. And so, you go to the location, scan the product, grab it, take it back to the packer and then one person can pack it. The other one would be single item batches. I think single item batches, I think it's a little underrated, but I think it's actually super useful and efficient inside the warehouse. So after you get done with your bulk shipments, you want to run into the single item batches. Your single item batches are going to grab all those onesie, twosies that don't have enough to bulk ship. They have enough for a pecker to go down and actually pick them efficiently and take them straight to the packer. And then once you get to the packer, the packer then has the option if they want to bulk ship just five of those or three of those and then you can move on to the next SKU. Yeah, so little note fact, the only, when we launched ShipHero, it was to have single item batch. Single item batch was the original idea behind ShipHero. So, in the warehouse that Josef and I, Josef, our VP of product, that I had, we had flash sales, so we would sell one deal a day, and we sold martial arts uniform for a martial art called Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Most people ordered one uniform. So, single item batch allowed us to reduce our pick and pack labor by 40% just by adding that feature and that was the only feature other than single order that we had at launch. A lot of people don't get it. They don't grok why it's useful. But yeah, for me it's bulk and then single, then multi. And, I wish more people would see the value in it. If you track your CPP, you'll see you drive it down a lot by using single item batch and pickers love it because they just fill up a cart. They just grab stuff. It's super fast and rewarding. So, I'm glad you liked that. I'm glad you liked that feature. I'm going to ask you one last question, which is, I think this building is what started the Segway trend. Is that correct? Yeah. Yes sir. Whose crazy idea was it to start whipping around this place on Segways? That would be Rob's idea. That was Rob's idea. Yeah, Rob wanted to be super efficient and like you said earlier, 130,000 square feet, you're paying someone to go to the restroom if they're on the far side of the warehouse. So, it could be a two, three minute walk, four minute walk, and they might see a buddy on the way or a coworker on the way and then stop there. And so, now you're paying for someone for a 15-minute walk in the park. And so, you get on the segway, and there's so much more you can get done. It is a wild idea. There's pros and cons to both sides, but at the end of the day it is super efficient, and it helps us get through the day, especially during peak season. I personally use it. Yeah, I've been 10:00 at night. You got a problem tote, it's all the way in the back in ABE, just jump on a segway, you get there, go grab it. Also, I'm short, it helps you reach the top row. Right. I'm a big fan, but I don't think I would've been the one to initiate using that. So, that's Rob's crazy genius there. All right, really appreciate it. Thank you. Great one. Thank you.
Learn how Tyler Anderson, Director of Warehouse Operations at ShipHero SLC, manages his team remotely to ensure efficient warehouse operations.In this video, Tyler talks about the recent changes in queue management, which consolidates orders into two statuses for better organization. He also shares useful tips on how to solve held orders and optimize inventory management for maximum efficiency. Plus, find out what metrics Tyler suggests tracking with ShipHero's Hero Board!Get all the insights you need to stay ahead in the game with Tyler's advice. Watch now!
Currently we're working on any of the new features that roll out with ShipHero to make sure that they tie into our current processes and how we can effectively use them on the floor. We document that, sign off on it, and then roll it out to the facilities for training. I'm here today with Tyler, leading member of our remote ops team. Before working on our remote ops team, Tyler helped run this facility where we are today in Salt Lake City, Utah. So first of all, thank you. No problem. So we have a bit of a unique setup in that we have nine buildings and we manage a lot of what happens in those buildings remotely, which is what your team does. So talk us through what is remote ops and... Well, first of all, why do we do it remotely instead of having the buildings manage it all themselves? So overall, the remote ops team is the ones that log in, we manage the queue, manage any orders that are on hold or possibly have an address issue, anything along those lines, to basically have the warehouse focus on getting the orders shipped out and clearing that queue every single day. We shouldn't have any members on the floor going, logging in, searching for one product, one SKU, one item or one order, wasting hours and hours a week just searching for one order. So the idea is basically it's easier to find and solve those problems sitting in front of your computer, and we want our warehouse managers on the floor, so we keep them on the floor, and then we have the remote ops team work remotely from their home computer basically. Yeah, absolutely. Or in in the warehouse in the office. And that's the biggest part about ShipHero being spread so across all nine facilities is we can login remotely, find out the issues, dig in from anywhere in the country basically. Right. Okay. So we're doing something a bit different called queue management. So the way most people use ShipHero is they put orders in different statuses and then they have their pickers log into those different statuses throughout the day and deplete those orders. We recently made a change which we call queue management. So walk us through first of all why, and then how does it actually work? Yeah, so we switched to running the queue management remotely to avoid pickers scrolling through dozens of statuses, changing, for one or two orders getting in one status when there's 20 in another. Essentially what we're doing here is combining everything into the one status and running it by picking tags. So we'll add tags to a certain group of orders- Let's go back. So the one status is today, right? Yes. It's today and tomorrow. Today and tomorrow status. That's what we're running. So if I'm the GM of this building, I have X number of orders in today. I got to ship 100% of those orders. Every one of them has got to go out, and I don't have to ship anything else. Right? Absolutely. And that is the point of the queue management being done remote is the remote ops team can log in and say, "This is how many orders you have for today. Move them into those statuses." So the management team on the floor in the warehouse doesn't have to worry about looking through those queues and handling it that way. And then once that queue in the today status hits zero, you're done for the day. So I think one of the advantages or one of the problems we would have before is orders would continue to come in throughout the day, and sometimes we would end up picking those orders, and there might be a lingering order from the prior day that just gets missed in the shuffle, and we didn't want that to happen. Yeah, exactly. Or you have one specific client that does decent amount of volume over everything else, and it will just bury the ones and twos orders that we have in the system. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's another issue we had, which is a client exceeding forecast dramatically, right? Absolutely. 3-4X forecast. And then they're getting the same priority as another customer who's on forecast, and then that customer on forecast might miss SLA, when really we should be hitting our forecast numbers for everyone, maybe plus 30% forecast, but basically that, and then save those excess orders for tomorrow for that client that's over forecast. So yeah, I'm excited about that change. So what are the typical problems that you're solving in the remote team? So a lot of it is held orders. An order comes into the system and is a back order or just needs to be pushed to a specific facility to ship out. It's finding those issues before it stops production on the floor. Through the queue management side of it, it's ensuring that each facility has work consistently throughout the day, so there's no downtime, and also planning out larger projects like tearing down the racking like we're doing in Salt Lake now, and rebuilding some more pick bins and forecasting out sales volumes over the peak season for our larger clients. Right, so you're actually talking maybe with the CSMs or the account managers, but you're talking to those clients, getting numbers, getting plans, and then putting internal plans, right? Absolutely. Okay. And you guys also work a bit on our SOPs and process and documenting and making sure we're uniform across buildings, right? We do, yep. Currently we're working on any of the new features that roll out with ShipHero to make sure that they tie into our current processes and how we can effectively use them on the floor. We document that, sign off on it and then roll it out to the facilities for training. What have you learned as we've developed this team over the last year that you didn't know when we started? A lot, actually. There's a lot more to logistics and fulfillment than just putting something in a box and putting a label on it. Negotiations with carriers, what you can negotiate, how to negotiate prices on those. That was a huge, huge push when I started with Randall with Golden Egg. And then a lot of how different seasons affect different clients, even if it's the same product, or two clients have the exact same product, how their sales can drastically differ even during the same season. So that was a eyeopener for me as well. Okay. Let's look at reporting. I know you're a big fan of the Hero Board. Yeah, love the Hero Board. Explain to me how you used to work without the Hero Board before that was created and how you use it today. Yeah. So before we had the Hero Board, I would actually just run a shipments report through Excel and have a bunch of macros set up of which picker and packer did how many orders, how many lines, how many units. It was very manual data across the board. Now, with the live shipping board, it's a couple of clicks and you can find out how many per hour each person's doing, how many line items, and then you can take that data and check it against how many units per order. If a person's only doing 12 orders an hour, but they're doing a thousand items, you can definitely weigh those out quite a bit to say, "Oh yeah, this is how many we should be at." Okay. And when you bring on a new associate or a temp, what's the unit picks per hour, the UPH that you want to see at a minimum, that you're like, "Hey, I'm going to keep investing in this associate," versus, "I'm just going to tell the agency not to send them back"? Absolutely. So the first two days we try to hit around 75% of our actual goal, to say that yeah, this person's good enough to keep on. The picking system in ShipHero is very easy to learn and understand. You can pick it up pretty quick. The layout of the facility is pretty much the only thing you need to really pay attention to on that. On the pack-out side, we try to hit around 75%, so about 35 to 40 orders an hour is where we want them to be at the first couple of days. Yeah, 'cause we target 50 right? Yeah. For a season. Then what's your consistent best packer? What number are they hitting? This last week I believe we were at 75 orders now for our best packers. Okay, that's good. And what makes someone a good packer? Consistency, actually. Just keeping that flow going, the consistent work. You'll hit those numbers pretty... The consistent flow of the packer, they'll definitely hit those numbers pretty efficiently. What's your favorite feature in ShipHero? My favorite feature? It's got to be bulk ship, actually. All right. You guys do a lot of bulk here. We do a lot of bulk ship here, so the fact that we can... It automatically lumps everything together that's similar SKUs, similar carriers. Everything can be shipped all at one time. And now we have the QR code scanning for the picking side, so you don't lose any quality on your picking side for the bulk ships. Right. So that's use the QR code for the puller, right? Yep. And then when you're talking about grouping it by carrier, I think right now we print them in order so it's like, let's say, all the FedEx and then all the UPS, so that you don't have to second sort, which is a lot of extra labor. Yeah, that was a huge help for us. When we first started out with Golden Egg, it was... We'd just print off... Here's all of our USPS. Print them all off on one batch, pack them out, all goes in the same gaylord and goes straight on the truck. Yeah, yeah, 'cause the sorting could be half the work in a quick bulk. Do we use Auto Baggers here at all? We previously had one. I believe we sent ours to Pennsylvania. They have a lot more smaller items than we had. All right. All right, and now we have none. You guys are still hitting your numbers, so- Yeah, we're still cranking it out. It's been good. What's the reporting that you do that is maybe not obvious to a new user of ShipHero? So honestly, a lot of what I do is tracking our cost per package internally as well. And ShipHero has all of that data that you need for your label costs for every shipment that we have. Now with the WorkforceHero, you have your labor data, you have your hours on each project, each side, picking, packing. You can download all of that and run all of your data to say, "This is where we're actually at across the board. Are we in a good spot or not?" If you were talking to someone who was brought in, just like you were, to manage a facility that has some customers but work on process, where would you tell them to start? Definitely process is the number one thing. Make sure you have a solid base foundation before you start building up on that. The next side of it, I would say, is your inventory and your inventory velocities. So accurate inventory is a huge, huge thing in this industry. If you're missing 100 units of something, that's 100 sales that don't go out the door, so making sure your receiving is on point, your inventory is on point and then you're running your shipment data to slot properly in your warehouse by velocity. So you want your fastest movers as close as you can to your pack stations, slower movers towards the back a little bit more. And is that just export, like the shipments report? Or how are you knowing what are my fast movers? So it's based on the shipments report. It's actually shipping in the system, as well as the clients also send that over to us as well, some of them. Right. So if we have a forecast, we know there's a big drop, maybe we put that in our little highway pallets on the floor, and if we see something that, hey, this is consistently selling, we're selling ski goggles because we're in Utah and it's November, we put that in the front, not aisle 13. Exactly. So you're minimizing that walk for your pickers from the back of the warehouse to the front. And then as well as in ShipHero you can set up your replenishment levels as well per SKU, and then it will ping our inventory team to say, "We need more of unit X forward up in this location as it's moving," so production doesn't stop because you're just out of inventory in a pickable bin. And if people don't realize the value of slotting, I think the report is 30% of all time is just spent walking. And by slotting more correctly, you're reducing that from 30%, or it could be worse than 30% if it's a poorly slotted warehouse, down to a 25%. And it's just wasted labor. There's no value for walking further for the same product, right? Exactly. So it's a great way to squeeze more efficiency without squeezing your employees. They actually like it better if... They'd rather be picking in the same amount of time than walking. Absolutely. All right. Any final tips for a new user of ShipHero? Learn the system as much as you can. It's a very robust system, has a lot of features, so dig in as much as you can and learn everything you can about it. All right, Thank you. Any time. Appreciate it.
Experience the world-class operations of the ShipHero Las Vegas facility as Ryan Mulroy, our General Manager, takes you on a journey through all that this warehouse offers.See firsthand his commitment to efficient picking and packing (50+ UPH) and effective implementation of SLAs and CPPs.Discover the wonders of our state-of-the-art warehouse operation systems and learn how they can help streamline your own warehouse operations. Tune in now for a behind-the-scenes look at ShipHero's Las Vegas warehouse!
Everything in a warehouse should have a flow. It comes into the building. It comes out of the building. Right now, our pickers start at that end of the building, and they finish all the way at the far end. They put their carts completed over in this area. All right. I'm here today with Ryan, the GM of our Las Vegas facility. It's a 200,000 square foot facility that we operate and serve about a couple dozen clients. Just want to thank you for the time. How long have you been running this facility? As of right now, about eight months. Pretty short time, pretty big building. What have you learned over the last eight months? Learned a lot specifically about fulfilling small parcel packages. Previous companies have been rental industry and furniture, large format packages, so definitely learning a lot in terms of how to most efficiently ship out the small parcel, where we can improve upon and what sizes matter the most for our customers. You're the GM of the building. Yes. What does that mean? What do you do all day? For me, that means I'm responsible for everything that is within the four walls. Any associate that touches a box or misplaces a product, my job is to make sure that we have processes in place, and that if we have processes in place, they're being followed, so that we can efficiently get our inventory in, out on time. What are the metrics that ... Every day you're working towards a goal, right? What are those metrics? What are those goals? Yeah. The main metrics and goals is making sure that we are picking and packing efficiently. Our standard is pack 50 an hour, pick 50 an hour. So making sure that the associates are meeting those standards, as well as ensuring that they're set up for success. That's the biggest thing, because I'm not going to hold them accountable for not hitting their numbers if I'm not doing everything in my power to make sure that they are going to hit that. Whether that's better organization on the floor, more stuff replen-ed, and at the end, just making sure all the orders are getting out at the end of the day and in a timely manner. We've got some stuff that's expedited that we have to get out by a certain time. I'm very big on getting that stuff done. What I always hear, the acronyms are SLA and CPP. Tell me what those two are and why they matter. SLA, the service level agreement, that's the agreement between us and our customers. Every SLA is a little bit different, per customer. We may have a certain percentage that we have to hit to ensure that that amount of packages are leaving for the day. I always strive to do a little bit better than that. But it can be different from every single customer. It's not like a one size fits all when it comes to an SLA. You get a customer with big giant boxes that need to ship out, maybe they take a little bit longer in order to get out. In terms of CPP, the cost per package, that's the main metric we try to focus on. You can put 20 people in a building when you have the work for 10. That's going to reflect poorly on your CPP. It's a really good metric for me, myself, to be able to measure how efficiently we are operating, and making sure that everybody's hitting their targets of pick or pack 50 or more. Basically, we make money if we're consistently hitting our SLA while minimizing our CPP. That's basically the business model of this facility. Yes. When you come in the morning and when you leave at night ... What's the first thing you look when you get here in the morning, and what's the thing you look at before you leave at night that makes you know, okay, my job here is done, and I can leave? First thing in the morning, I literally wake up and roll out of bed. First thing I do is I just check the report to see how many orders we have, on the homepage right there. I can just quickly and easily see, okay, normal order volume, accelerated order volume. That just lets me know that, when I come in, I'm either going to have to reshuffle employees to better take care, or if we're slow, I'll give Tomasi a little ping and say, "Hey. I'm going to be sending some people your way first thing in the morning to do cycle counts." Right. Tomasi's our inbound manager. Yes. Right? What basically I'm hearing is if we have more people scheduled to work for the day than what you anticipate you'll need to fill all those orders, we shift some of those people to Tomasi's team so that Tomasi can use them to count some locations that maybe haven't been counted in a while. Is that accurate? Correct. Yep. Big on cross training in this facility, so a lot of people know how to do multiple types of jobs. There's times where we just have a rush, and we want to get the orders done. As we break off and finish, and complete a large chunk of orders, we may have them go assist with offloading a truck so we can get that done sooner. Does WorkforceHero help you manage who's doing what? Yes. WorkforceHero definitely helps us manage that. It's very easy to just look at a screen, be able to see how many people I have in picking, how many people I have in packing, and then help me balance it out. Maybe Tomasi is light on replen or cycle counts. It really, really helps. You were showing me earlier some interesting things that you were doing in Excel to track employees' time off task using the WorkforceHero data. Explain to me why you're doing that and what the goal there is. The biggest reason I'm doing that is so that I can see how much downtime there is with the associates. The warnings come after three minutes of no activity detected. The warning is the automatic ... when it turns red on the board, right? Yes. It'll turn red as a visual cue, but it also tracks it in the system so that I can action and, say, look at several employees over multiple shifts, and say, "All right. In the AM shift, there's X amount of downtime. In the PM shift, there's almost double or maybe even triple at times." That way, I can look and try to figure out why we are having such an issue in the PM shift, whether it's a system issue, whether it's lack of orders, in which case, if it was lack of orders in the PM, I would just get on my supervisor to reshuffle and move more towards inventory and cycle counts. Utilize them better. Yes. So basically, you go to WorkforceHero, you export the warnings, you do your pivot table, you do your analysis, and then you say, "Okay. Here's what I learned this week." Maybe there's a problem with a person. Maybe it's a problem with the shift. Maybe everything's great. Then you take your actions from there. Yeah. All right. Let's say you can go back in time and give Ryan on his first day something to think about. What would you tell him? I would say ask more questions. I made a lot of assumptions when I first came in. Everybody at ShipHero is kind of like an open book. If I would've reached out more, I probably would've learned a lot more earlier. I did a lot of double work trying to figure stuff out, but that comes from past experiences where I was one of the only people to figure it out. Yeah. I think if you ask Rob a question, he'll spend four hours explaining you the answer. He's usually quick, but he'll definitely have an opinion. What's your favorite feature in ShipHero? Favorite feature is honestly WorkforceHero. Every job that I have had, I have wanted the data and the metrics of individual employees, to see who's working on what almost every single hour of the day. This is finally allowing me to view that and create actionable data. Any tips for a new GM of a building for labor force management? Not the technology, the people side of it. The biggest advice I'd have is just to not be afraid to ask people what they are doing. A lot of times, managers and supervisors are kind of scared to have that initial conversation, especially with the new- They don't want to seem like they're harassing them or bothering them. But feel free to ask them, "Hey. What are you doing?" and just reinforce it. Ask a question. Like, "I'm just curious. I want to learn. What do you do in the first hour of work? What do you do as soon as you get off of lunch? What are you doing right now? What is going through your brain?" Ask the question, right? Exactly. We always ... believers in ask the question, you get an answer. That's great. Can you give me an idea of what the new employee onboarding, not the HR part, but the training, and where are you start them, and where you move them to when you bring a new associate in? Right now, once I get through the HR training, they come directly to the floor to one of the supervisors who immediately pairs them with an associate who can train them on the basics of what their task is going to be. It's a peer training? Yes, peer training. We do that for a couple of hours or until the associate is comfortable. As soon as they are comfortable to be able to operate on their own, we let them go do their thing, check in every once in a while. At the end of the day, we'll review logs, if we can, to see how well they did picking, how well they did packing. Some stuff is a lot easier to get them out into the world than others. Do you typically start with picking or packing? Always with picking. Picking. Interesting. Okay. Yep, 100% starting with picking, because if you make a mistake in picking, you're going to catch it in packing. If you start them in packing, then it's done. That's smart. You bring in a new picker. I assume you see in the hero board, at the end of the day, how many units they picked, right? Yes. What's the UPH, the units picked per hour, that's like this person needs to be retrained or let go, versus they're safe, versus this is a superstar? For me personally, I try to keep it at 100 per hour. That would be a this is a solid associate, we're going to keep investing in them? Yes. What about day one? Because day one, day two, it does take some time, right? Are you seeing that right away, or does it take a couple weeks till they get up to that level? It typically takes about three to four days ... Three to four days? ... to get to that level. It just depends on what we have in that time period. Because if you're doing a multi-item batch right off the bat, pretty easy to hit those numbers. If you have them working on custom or other specialty types of things, those numbers are going to fluctuate wildly. Socks are faster than standing desks. Yes, absolutely. Now, what's the trigger that's going to say, "Okay. I'm going to now cross train this person for packing"? How do you know they're ready to be trained in packing? Partially, it's time. Secondly, it is how many errors. How much time? Most of the time, about a week, maybe a week and a half. I prefer to have them pick, so then we can move them over to packing once they feel comfortable and they almost feel like they can pick in their sleep, as long as it's a low error rate. We are tracking if an associate puts too many items into a bin or too few items into ... I'm sorry, into a tote. How are we tracking that, by the use of the hospital button? How do we know? We use by the hospital button, and then the WAM or a supervisor will look at it. We just internally track if there was an error, what the error was,- not in tote, extra items in tote, things of that nature. For people who don't know, WAM's a warehouse account manager. What's a WAM's job? The WAM's job, it's massive. Okay. A super important role. Yep. Super important role. Kristian leads them. She's our chief WAM officer. Shout out to Kristian. All right. The WAM for us here in Vegas, they are a lot of the main interface between a customer and us in the warehouse. So on top of the other duties that they have, they're the main voice that we have. If we have an issue with a product, and we find out maybe something is noncompliant, or we're having issues in terms of automation such as an item is too big and it's showing up in a multi-item batch, it really should be custom, they are the ones that take that off of my hands and my manager's hands to get it fixed so that we can keep our pickers picking efficiently. The reason why we introduced the WAMs is customer support, instead of going to the warehouse manager, instead of going to Ryan with every question, can now go to the WAM. The WAM can address those customer specific issues and leave the warehouse manager, general manager to manage the team, manage the floor, manage the process rather than get buried in customer specific things. I'm not sure that WAMs are an acronym anyone else uses, but WAM's been a super helpful innovation that we've been using here at the ShipHero fulfillment warehouses. So recommend you guys try that. WAMs also deal with problem totes, right? Yes. If there's a tote that has an error, missing a product, won't scan, they just get through the resolutions on all those as well, right? Yep. Anything from a short pick to address issues, label issues, all sorts of stuff. All right. Can I have you walk us through how the packing stations here are set up? Are we going to do that physically over there? Yep. Okay. This is one of our pack stations. It is where we ship out all of our multi-item batch and single-item batch orders. It is designed to go from left to right and to not to touch anything whenever possible. We scan the totes. We scan the items. We then go to select the boxes. We've got smaller boxes up top. We have larger boxes down below, as well as poly bags. The idea is for a packer to never have to touch a mouse or a keyboard. Everything is basically automated to the point to where they only touch the box that they select. They build it. They scan the item, pack it out, seal it up, label it, get it on out into the mail totes. We do have lights at the pack stations. Our packers, when they go to the station, they turn it green, so that way, the water spider or any managers knows who's at a pack station and which ones are empty. If they're running low on supplies, they turn the light yellow. That alerts somebody to come and give them assistance. That's typically if they are running low on 6, 4, 4 boxes, poly or anything like that. If for any reason a packer is unable to complete their order, they turn it red, whether that's they don't have any totes, there's a system issue. They are basically dead in the water and they cannot do their job. If any of us sees a red station, a manager, a supervisor or a water spider will pretty much make that their top priority to try to fix. The water spider's main job is to ensure that the packers are well fed at the stations with totes, boxes and supplies so that they can try to focus on just packing out as many orders as possible and not worry about anything else. Their job is to bring them everything that they need so that they don't have to leave. Also troubleshooting anything that may go wrong with a station. The other thing is if it's going to take more than 30 seconds to fix, we're just going to have the water spider move them to another pack station. That's why we have ones that are empty, that aren't being used. That way, we can troubleshoot the issue if it's a longer fix, and keep the flow going, and ensure that the packers are going to hit the numbers that we want them to hit. If we have a problem tote, whether it's you don't have all the items you need, it's a label issue, anything like that, we do have a hospital button. In the middle of packing, if you have any of those issues, you hit the hospital button, you turn it around and put it back onto the cart. It's going to go to the WAM to get looked at and resolved. We have two cameras. We have one that actually hooks into the computer and one that works off of wifi. The one for the computer is for the orders. When we hit the photo and label button, it'll actually take a bird's eye view of whatever the packer is packing. Then we have the wifi ones which actually connect to a device over at our outbound command center. The device at the outbound command center, we just have pretty much every single pack station on the screen at the same time, so we can just try to make sure that people are adding the appropriate amount of dunnage, people are using bubbles when necessary, and that they are sealing up with the appropriate amount of tape. When we do void fill, we've got a couple of options. We either have bubble wrap, which is down here, or we use the paper void fill, which is going on behind me. It's automatic. If you pull it, more comes out. If you need longer rolls, there's a pedal down here. I can make an endless amount come out. Vegas is unique. We are a very hot facility, and we are in a very arid and dry climate. We have something called evaporative coolers which help keep our employees cool. What that is basically just a giant wet fan on the top of the building that sucks in moisture and throws out a cool breeze. We also have fans at the packing stations. During the hot heat days of 100 to 116, 120 degree weather that we have, we also provide our associates with Gatorade and electrolyte packets so that we can ensure that everybody is staying hydrated. The way this is taped off, I think you came up with this. Yes. Explain to me what we're doing here. Everything in a warehouse should have a flow. It comes into the building. It comes out of the building. Right now, our pickers start at that end of the building, and they finish all the way at the far end. They put their carts completed over in this area. We do follow FIFO for the carts that are being done. Where we're standing right now, the expediting priority area means that it's going to the front of the line. If somebody picks an expedited priority cart, it comes here, the water spider is going to bring it to a pack station first. All our regular orders that are due today that are not expedited priority, they all come right here. As they're picked, they're packed. We don't give any preferential treatment to any customer over another. We just get out whatever gets picked first. The way I understand this works is any order that's expedited priority or urgent, those carts get staged in this box. Right. As soon as there's an available associate to pack out orders, the water spider takes from this area first, gives it to them. Yup. Once this area is empty, they grab the first cart in the default area, which would be the first picked on the day, bring that to the packing area, keep working through it in order. So the first cart picked is the first cart packed. Correct? Correct. So we don't end up with someone, let's say, cherry picking and say, "Well, that's a tough one. I don't really want to pack that out because that has a lot of bubble wrap," and they choose to skip one. Right? It's FIFO, first in first out. You get what you got, right? Correct. Then we have over there custom. Those have a separate station that's just got a bigger area to pack on. It's not on the desk, it's on its own standing little scale. Right. We have that staged separately so the water spider knows to feed the next custom station with those. There's no mixing, so you don't get a custom accidentally mixed in, Right? Correct. This the way it works? Yeah. The important thing, and why I like to run FIFO for the carts, is that at 10:00 AM every single morning, we have already packed out all the orders that were picked the previous night. So we can run an age tote report, and see if there are any that maybe didn't make it into hospital or are just missing, so we can go find them, action them. We don't run into, "Well, this tote was picked two days ago. Why is it not packed out yet?" We get ahead of it. So the way you make sure that no totes sit and wait until the customer complains about it is you FIFO all the carts, first and first out, which means if by 10:00 AM today there's a tote that was picked yesterday, you know it's not waiting, which means it's in the problem tote area or some other issue, and you know to dig in. Correct? Yep. All right. If you have any questions, please put them in the comments below. Don't forget to smash that like and subscribe button.
Got a warehouse to manage?Our 4th video of our Warehouse Operating Systems series features ShipHero VP of Operations, Rob McFaul, and shows how his team leverages this powerful software to reduce time spent on special projects.With easy-to-follow instructions and native language support, stop the manual tracking and join us in revolutionizing WMS with WorkforceHero!
"Well, I got the job done." "Yeah, but we didn't bill for it. Yeah, we made the customer happy, but it wasn't necessarily the best thing." In a warehouse, it's not just picking and packing. We've got what we call special projects, but it's special projects or anything that doesn't fit into your normal pick, pack and ship flow. If you're a 3PL, you're charging your clients typically by hour for your special projects. So you'll have a team that works with special projects, you'll track those hours, you'll bill your client for those hours, in theory. In reality, oftentimes the hours billed is a lot less than the hours clocked, which isn't because anyone's doing anything malicious, but the people are working on special projects. They're focused on getting that work done, not necessarily tracking well what projects they're working on. We had that problem in our own buildings. We solve it using our WorkforceHero feature, which is our labor force management that runs across the warehouse. I'm going to work today with Rob McFaul, who's our VP of Fulfillment Operations, who's going to talk us through WorkforceHero to make sure that the hours we bill for special projects match the hours actually worked on those projects so we're not losing revenue that we earn, and also how we track to make sure that the amount of hours in payroll for the people assigned to special projects also matches what we're billed so that there's not a significant amount of time off task or unbilled time. Because the way the economics of special projects will typically work is you pay an average of $20 an hour, you charge your customer $45 an hour, but you have an admin overhead management fees and costs associated with it. So it's profitable, but it's not super profitable. So you need to make sure that you don't have any time off task, any more leakage than the bare minimum so that you're profitable in your special projects. So Rob, why don't you start by talking us through how an individual associate who's working on special projects tracks which project they're working on. Okay. So essentially, when an associate shows up to work, they're going to walk up to a kiosk like this. This kiosk will allow them, with a badge, to clock into their job. Very simple. No pin codes, no memorization. This can also be associated with a door lock. So they just have this one badge. They walk into the facility and they're going to use this to clock in, that would start their pay for that day. What we did with special projects specifically is allowed them to very easily scan into a job that then gets tracked through WorkforceHero to what Aaron said and how it's easily tracked. Then it's very simple. No one has to write things down, no one has to pull up an Excel spreadsheet and try to remember who did what when a week later when the manager's trying to figure out what they did. They're just empowered to do this. And we'll show you later how easy it is for the manager or supervisor to track, to make sure that it's actually being tracked properly. So I'm going to take my badge, I'm going to scan it. It's going to tell me, "Hey, you're here." So, now I have the option to select a job, go to lunch, finish my ship, or go to a specific job. That job could be picking, packing, whatever, but in the case of special projects, I have this QR code. This QR code is associated on the backend with a specific project. All they need to know is they need this for the job. They could have a stack of them and be rotating through. Oh, yeah, I let it time out. Let's get this back on. Okay. So now, I just scan that and now it says I joined that job. The job name is arbitrary. We use Digits to back it up as like a job ID, but you could use the name, you could use any kind of thing you want. And the good thing about this is if the job has not been created in a WorkforceHero yet, we put the digits SP- in front of the job name, that tells the system that it's a special project and will auto create the job on the first scan so that no one has to go in and create the job within ShipHero. Any challenges with managing the special projects team? And you've been doing this for a lot of years. What have you learned over those years to make special projects better? The challenges that obviously led us to this is that tracking, that manual, someone has to write, "Okay, three people start on a special project." Someone has to write that down on a piece of paper. What I hear from managers and I've heard over the years is that's their last priority. Their first priority is to calm the issue, which is get the job done. So they're focused on that. They've got 10 people that just showed up, they're temp workers, whatever. They're unloading a truck, they could be wrapping something, anything that's billable, and then they forget about that part. So it's like, "Well, I got the job done." "Yeah, but we didn't bill for it. Yeah, we made the customer happy, but it wasn't necessarily the best thing." So what we needed to do is integrate a system where that manual tracking was removed and that oversight could be done by a manager, and you'll see the system later for that. So that challenge is now averted by using this system where they don't have to manually track. All they have to do is make sure that the employees who show up to work are now clocked into that job, including the manager or anybody involved with that project, and it will track all of it. Okay. And my understanding is you can actually connect this to 3PL billing so that the customer's automatically billed as part of that special project for the labor component. There's other components, typically the pallet fee or if you have a per item fee, but the hours will automatically pull from WorkforceHero to 3PL billing so that the client is automatically billed for the hours. So one less task. They're going to use a function within ShipHero called Work Orders, which will allow you to bill the special project, whether it's a special project or what we would call a work order assembly order. And in there is where the job will be created in ShipHero, and there'll be ad hoc charges. So in 3PL billing, we use ad hoc charges to bill for stuff. So not only will it pull in the special project hours, but any box charges, label or pallets can all be added as ad hoc charges to the work order. And then that will be connected to 3PL billing and pulled in as a full ad hoc charge based on all the components, including hours of that job. So when you think about the people side, how do you decide which people should go on special projects versus picking or packing or sorting? The decision would be based on a little bit more of experience in the warehouse because there's more diversity in it. So I can start someone as a picker or a packer fairly easily. First day, there's a few sets of instructions like push this button, do this, scan that, very simple instruction. So it's a good place to start people, but we can also start people on special projects assembly where you have someone who's leading the task, leading the job, but then you have a bunch of people that would just be assembling things in a very factory-like way or assembly fashion. So that would be determined on day. But the leaders, the people that are running it, they have to go into the computer, they have to understand a little bit about some of our software to be able to run it as opposed to a picker packer. So maybe an experienced packer who gets good at what they do or shows that they understand our software better could be moved to special project. So it sounds like you need a ton of experience for the special projects lead, lots of warehouse experience, know how to bill the pallet. And then for the individuals below them working on it, that's often could be temps or new hires who just have to be able to follow a simple set of instructions. Absolutely. And as long as a lot of the project is just that manual labor aspect, but that one person, those two people that need to work that flow, and now that person, that lead doesn't have to try to remember how many hours all these people work. All they say is, "Here's your code, here's your badge. Make sure you keep this code with you for that job. When you're done that job, hand them back. I'll give you a new one for our next project and I'll direct you." So that labor management part is very simple and very low energy. The barrier to entry is quite low to track it very well. One thing that I'm really excited that we changed recently was a problem that we used to have, from what I recall, is projects would show up on the floor, they would be incomplete, the floor could not complete it. They didn't necessarily get back to the person who created the project quickly. And then we'd have projects sitting idle for a significant period of time on work. And I believe what we're doing right now is the team, the remote team, so it's not a team in the building, make sure that the projects are fully complete and then hence the building, just the next few tasks that they're supposed to work on, and then it is their job to make sure that nothing gets to the warehouse floor that the warehouse floor cannot do. Yeah. Anything that's non-actionable does not show up. So there's no noise for the warehouse. What we try to do is make sure that the noise that they see or the interruptions or the distractions are minimized. So if their job or our system, if their job's not done or if they have a blocker, that'll go back to our remote team, that job will move off their project board and they'll move on to something else that's ready to work on basically. And the remote team will look at it, determine the blockers, solve them, and then put it back on their job board. And we do that with the ShipHero to monday.com integration, right? Yes. Yes. That's how it goes back. So we use monday.com for that project management piece and future state with ShipHero, we're going to use ShipHero more and more and more to actually manage that whole flow even with the remote team right within ShipHero. At the moment, in a work order or a special projects, you can upload attachments, BOLs, weights, DIMs, box information, all the things that are part of that project, right into ShipHero. So I've talked to the development team and we're certainly working towards a fully functional system right within the software where that project can be managed remotely and onsite with ShipHero. All right. And when you think about the people in this building, what percent of them are working on special projects? It's usually a low percent depending on the B2B component in that building. Most of the warehouses have a team of anywhere from two to four people that work on special projects, and that's their main function. What will happen is a very large special projects comes in, you can see behind me, they're working on pulling all these boxes for a client and they're probably going to bring in extra people. And the great thing about that component is the labor management of it, you see your pickers are slow or something like that, you can pull them over to special projects, put them on the billable hours by handing them a QR code. Every single person in the building has a ShipHero QR code on their badge to scan to the kiosk to clock in. So it's a fully integrated system. So WorkforceHero is a fully integrated system with ShipHero as a WMS, something that I've always wanted, because in a warehouse we have our time clock, whatever that is, and there's various companies that provide time clock clock in abilities, but it's never been connected with the WMS. So what we did in ShipHero was we put them together so that activities within the warehouse could be also tracked in the time or your pay system. So that makes it that fully integrated solution so you can see what pickers are doing, idle time, time off task, as Aaron said. It auto-detects their activity. So in this case, there's no auto-detection, so we're scanning it. But if I start picking in the app, automatically I moved into that job of picking or packing or inventory, replenishment of all the jobs within are auto recognized. It also tells you when they're not doing something, time off task. So that integrated system is, I've never seen it before, and it makes managers have less time worrying about that admin stuff with employees and more time trying to make sure that their job gets done. As you think about the profitability of running a 3PL, because you're charging for time and labor in special projects, and this is just a microcosm of running the whole building, the only way you're losing money on special projects is not counting time and time off task. And it happens all the time. Every warehouse has leakage to time off task. If you're not tracking it, you don't know how bad it is and you cannot fix it. So we found, as the system gets rolled out to more buildings, the percent of hours billed increases dramatically just because as you track it, people will actually enter the data and you do a much better job of capturing the revenue that you as a business owner have earned. So your customers owe it to you, just got to make sure you're billing them for it. I want to talk about one last thing before we go, which is non-English speakers. So we're here in Florida, but every building from the south through the north has a significant percentage of non-English speakers in the warehouse. So how do you think about non-English speakers and making sure that they've got the tools they need to do the work, both in special projects and throughout the warehouse? So this has obviously been a pain point for us for years. So once again, the ShipHero engineers came up with a solution, with Aaron's lead, and basically we have made it so that a user within ShipHero, you can set their native language where it's Mexico Spanish or it could be Spain Spanish or French Canadian versus France, different language. And what it will do is when they scan their badge, it'll come up in Spanish or whatever language they want. So this has been a pain point. Even though the tasks are somewhat simple, there are instructions given to pickers, packers, special projects workers that are not complicated, but if they can't read them, they sometimes ignore them. So now, if you set their language, when they're interacting with the system, it's going to show them the communication in their language. Yeah, that's something we're working on, continuing to roll out more languages across more parts of the system because A, it reduces mistakes, but B, most importantly for me, I think it increases retention of those associates as they see that they're respected, that we're putting the effort towards accommodating their native language, they're more likely to stick. And we have a lot of really hardworking, dedicated employees that do not speak English. And by giving them the tools they need to do their job really well, we have a higher retention with them. So something I'm really proud of. This was just a recent feature that we turned on here, and I saw one of the employees who I've known for years walk up and scan her badge and her face just lit up because this was the first time she was actually able to read the screen properly. So that was a great feature. Just continually trying to work with the people, work with the software, the engineers, WorkforceHero is a work in progress. There's still more features to be added. I have more ideas, but its basic functionality now can be fully utilized as a payroll system and as a tracker of activities within the warehouse. So it's a dual purpose there. The point is not to cover payroll just so that you have one less piece of software, it's so that by having it together, that's how you know that the hours worked match the hours paid. Because you've probably kitted and shipped out of here tens or hundreds of thousands of special projects over the years, any last thoughts about what someone who's starting up a 3PL should be thinking about running a warehouse really well for special projects? Well, now that we have this software, it's really a matter of execution and having the organization, the way we do it with a team, whether it's remote or not, if you're running your own warehouse and you're trying to make sure it works, having that point person who sets the jobs all up, they're already being set up automatically, so it's a very simple process. And then I think the main thing for whoever's doing that is we have a dashboard, which you're going to see probably in a screen cutaway. It is a nice dashboard that's going to show you what jobs are clocked into for how long. And so you can manage that very easily on a daily basis to do a sanity check, end of the day, quick look on the dashboard, make sure that the projects that you expected to be billing are being billed, because you still rely on the employee to scan. So there is that point of failure potentially with that. So that's why the dashboard is there, to give you that extra bit of work. And then being efficient, touching things once, the standard warehouse stuff, just making sure that when people are pulling stuff, they're putting them in locations, they're putting them in spots where they know where they are so that there's just no confusion. Keep it simple. Yeah, I'll add accountability and just making sure that you're connecting all the dots so that you're hitting your SLAs for your customers and you're getting billed for it. It is a process. As long as you're following that process, you'll do well. But if you ignore it and you just assume it runs itself, you'll often have gaps that can be really costly. So, I would encourage everyone who's running a warehouse to spend a couple of days thinking about their special projects process and flow, make sure there's one person owning what gets done, make sure that it's complete before it gets to the warehouse and that you're tracking the hours. Once you have that system in place, you'll find that your revenue capture is higher than it was before. Just why I'm so adamant about making sure that at the end of the day you're checking, because very easily someone could stay clocked in by mistake, they forgot to clock out, and then you're overbilling. You don't want to overbill your clients either. They don't like that very much. So because this is your source of truth, meaning this tracking system, if it's incorrectly tracked because of the human element, you need to make sure that you're checking both ends of those transactions so that when someone's out of the building but still "billing hours," you don't want that to happen. And just as a final point, even if you're a 3PL with four or five employees, this is just as important to be able to track that time. It's just one less thing you have to think about. And even if that person is full-time doing a job, there's multiple projects. So if you have projects that you're doing or you have billable hours, or you just want to know how long someone is doing something in a specified task, whether it, I don't know, changing the lights, whatever it is, you could create a special project or a time tracking job for that person to scan in and it can be tracked. So even in a small warehouse is very beneficial. As you can tell, we're really passionate about building the best software in the world for helping you manage your special projects, everything from making sure the job is done to making sure you're capturing the money. But please add any comments. I'm sure we're missing things. How can we make this better? Whether you're a ShipHero user or not, just add a comment to the video and we'll respond. Thank you.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to grow a business and achieve entrepreneurial success?You're in luck! In this exclusive video, we talk to Aaron Rubin, founder and CEO of ShipHero, and Randall Guernsey, head of our Salt Lake City warehouse operations.Get essential insights from our experts on maximizing your warehouse operation systems for success and take your business to the next level! Don't miss out - watch now!
- Doing what we do is nothing magical, right? Anybody can take a product, put it in a box, and give it to a carrier. It's really about the relationship that you build with those customers and being able to follow through with what you say you're going to do. (mellow jazz music) - We've known each other for many years. You were a customer, then we went through a process, acquired your business, and now we work together to make sure that this building, where we are today in Salt Lake City is a world class fulfillment center for our eCommerce clients, right? - Absolutely. - So first of all, thank you for the journey together. So talk to me about how you got started in this business and what that journey's been like for you. You have an interesting story. - Yeah, it's been quite a roller coaster to say the least, that my journey started back in 2004, 2005. My brother actually started his own fulfillment company focusing specifically on eCommerce order fulfillment, which again, at that time, Amazon was still a bookstore and eBay was really the, you can actually buy stuff online and have it shipped to you, so there wasn't a whole lot of pick-and-pack competition at the time. And that's really kind of where I got my roots started. And through the course of that business, it ended up getting acquired, and that's what gave me the motivation to start my own business, which became Golden Egg Solutions which I started in 2016. Again, with the focus on eCommerce, small parcel, direct-to-consumer pick-and-pack services. But I also wanted to be a little bit more omnichannel to focus on B2B replenishments. You know, Amazon FBA, hazmat products, wholesale order fulfillment as well, to try and bring all of those services consolidated under one roof. And it just quickly grew, quickly blossomed, but not to say it didn't come without its own share of roadblocks and headaches to try and overcome throughout the process. - Yeah, but you did go from startup to pretty successful, grew pretty quickly, sold a business, you know, pretty short amount of time. So, and I know a lot of people, they wanna achieve that, right? They're starting their 3PL today, or they started it a couple years ago and they're they're trying to grow to that level. What was it that allowed you to acquire customers and grow so quickly when you started? - If I were to narrow it down, I would really say it had to be the attention to detail and the customer service approach. Because really doing what we do is nothing magical, right? Anybody can take a product, put it in a box, and give it to a carrier. It's really about the relationship that you build with those customers and being able to follow through with what you say you're going to do. The communication is a huge portion of that, because when you are starting a small business and when we're bringing on new customers, oftentimes that client, that is their livelihood. That's how they pay their bills. That's how they put food on their table, that they don't want to just feel like another number in the books to a bigger company. They wanted to feel like this vendor, this provider actually has their best interest and their best benefits in mind. And that's kind of the way that I approached my business and grew it with kind of a white-gloved, so to speak, customer-centric approach to it. - Yeah, and Golden Egg always had a great customer reputation. And I know you had good success like the nutraceuticals category. And from what I remember, maybe there was some word of mouth there also where you served one person and it's an industry, right? - Yeah. - People talk and then they're like, "Hey, who are you using? Oh, I'm not too happy." "Oh, well my guy's actually pretty good. Let me just give you Randall's cell phone." And some clients come from there, right? - Yeah, so that's part of where my brother's company had a lot of success in, was in the affiliate marketing industry, specifically related to health and wellness and nutraceuticals. So finding our foothold in that industry early on was very critical to that success of being able to build a early reputation, a strong reputation of being a solid service provider within that industry. And yeah, if you do good with one client, then word does get around that, "Hey, who's your guy that you use for this services?" And you know, luckily I was that guy. - Right, yeah, no, reputation's everything, right? And you had a great reputation. Let's talk about what technology you used. So when you started start with ShipStation, right? How long were you there? What was that journey like? - Oh, it was a struggle. So, you know, just for lack of options and ease of use, you know, ShipStation is a great platform to be able to print a label. But that's really the extent of it. And when you're starting a small business, that's really, you know, kind of the main focus is just getting product out the door. There really isn't a big attention to detail on inventory, slotting, the accuracy of when it comes in. But as I continued to grow my business, those problems became very real that a lot of feedback and pressure from our clients of wanting more visibility, an actual customer portal to be able to log into to submit order requests, to run inventory reports, to run general reports, just didn't exist within the ShipStation platform. So through my own journey of looking at different WMS software and different systems that's fortunately where I stumbled across ShipHero and it was absolutely a game changer, you know. From the first demo that I had on the system compared to other big providers that were already available, just the function and ease of use, you know, the learning curve was next to none because it did have a lot of that same user interface, at least, you know, from a aesthetic standpoint that made it very simple to navigate the system and implement it in real time. And being able to roll that out to our customers was very quick, very painless, and nothing but positive feedback from that point. - That's great. So how many employees were you when you decided, "Hey, I need to get a WMS?" - There was only four of us at that point. - Four, wow, okay, so it was early to switch. - Very early on. I think it was within the first year and a half of starting up Golden Egg is when we started to experience the limitations with ShipStation. - And was part of that you thinking like, "Hey, this this business is growing, I'm four now but I'm gonna be eight, I'm gonna be 16, I'm gonna be 32. I need a game plan, I need to get ahead of this." - A lot of it was actually based on the ability to segment client profiles and have an easier integration with their store profiles. Fortunately, you know, the scalability from a user standpoint kind of came with the package, but that's really what was driving that decision was making sure that there's the segregation of inventory, portal logins from a client standpoint, and making sure that we did the process differently from picking orders to actually packing. Because, you know, ShipStation doesn't provide that same type of visibility. It's just a paper pick ticket, which then comes up to the employee's memory of where product is slotted, versus having the system actually tell you to go to a specific location to pull an order. - Okay, so today you're running a nice-sized building with a good number of customers and a lot of volume. What's your favorite ShipHero feature? - My favorite feature is probably the newest one that we've been using, which is the WorkforceHero feature. Just from a labor standpoint and a supervision standpoint, it gives you so much visibility into what is happening on the workforce floor without having to be involved with everything myself. I can simply pull up the dashboard and I can see exactly which employees are clocked into which specific task, how long they've been there, whether or not they're idle in it, and it gives us that much more power to focus our labor efforts into tasks that really need the attention. - Yeah, I know sometimes easy to check that when you're not even in the building, right? - Yeah. - Just like gives you a little, like, what's going on there? - Exactly. - Yeah - Exactly, so from a management standpoint, that is absolutely a game-changing feature. - So let's talk about people. So we track SLA and CPP, right? We have to hit our service level agreements to our clients and we wanna do that at lowest cost per package. This building excels at that. Last several weeks been top of the charts, consistent high performers. So that mostly comes down to, it's people and process, right? - Absolutely. - So let's talk about the people side. Good team. Team's been here for a while. Leadership's been here for a while. What do you attribute the success of building and and maintaining that team here? - A lot of it does come down to the culture and the environment that we try and facilitate here within the building. Treating people the way that they want to be treated, giving them opportunities for advancement and, you know, hearing their feedback, actually listening to their concerns and trying to implement changes where we can, where everybody benefits. And that's kind of what has really spearheaded the retention that we have with our employees. And a lot of them came to us with zero experience, with not the best backgrounds. And now some of those are the ones that are supervising and leading the teams, which has really kind of solidified that culture that we do care about everybody, that we try and give everybody an opportunity to succeed, to grow within their own professional career. And it, it shows with the team that we have and their dedication and commitment to working hard. - Yeah, and I've seen that firsthand. Some leaders here who you gave 'em a second shot, right? Maybe some other businesses wouldn't have taken a shot at them or given 'em a shot to succeed, and they came from, they're just picking and packing through now managing all the pickers and packers, right? - Yep. - So I've seen that, and they're super happy. Like you could see there's some people where it's like, "All right, they believed in me, they gave me the opportunity, they treat me with respect, and I'm gonna bust my ass for the company." And you guys kick ass at that. Talk to me about Tyler. How'd you hire him and and why did you? And Tyler's one filming this, right? - So that's easily hands down my best hire that I've made to date. But it was very conscious, the decision. You know, when I was looking to grow the company, I was doing it very strategically by building a solid foundation. And really the only way to do that in a startup company is to document and solidify process. Because otherwise, like, everything has to come from up here. And then it's a peer-to-peer training program. And that's what I really wanted to pull myself out of was working in my business to be able to work on my business. And in order to do that, I needed somebody with operational experience, you know, a good head on their shoulders, that was willing to take a chance on a young and growing company to document process and procedure, train people on that, roll it out, and then start measuring and tracking the success of that to ensure that we're still moving forward in the right direction. And you know, fortunately Tyler was one of those people that applied to it. And you know, funny enough, I almost didn't hire him because he blew me off for that first interview from his previous job that he wasn't able to make it. But, you know, my big heart gave him a second chance. - There you go, you're Mr. Second Chance. And now Tyler does that same role nationwide. So it worked out. - Yeah, absolutely. - It worked out for Tyler. - Good job, Tyler. - It was a good thing he showed up for the second interview. So if there was someone here, I know you help a lot of other business owners, but let's just, for the people that are watching it, who don't have the opportunity to talk to you one-on-one, someone who's a new 3PL owner, just starting, just scaling, what advice would you give 'em? - Focus on the process, you know. Stick to the basics and don't worry about trying to grow too quickly. That is definitely the thing that I've found is, again, once you can hold your end of the agreement and follow through with what you say you're going to do, the reputation builds itself and word of mouth starts getting around. That a lot of business owners, I feel, kind of get lost in the weeds of either continuously working in their business and don't focus enough time on building a solid foundation and a solid process that bigger, larger clients can actually have a stable base to grow from. - Yeah, I mean I think the one thing I would, well, I've learned from watching you run this business is you didn't pick like, "Oh, I'm gonna take this one thing and it's gonna be this super sexy, flashy thing." You just like, step by step just built it with just solid, no, you know, I mean it's like Covid, which was a little crazy, but you know, no 100% growth years, no hiring a ton of salespeople, none of that. Just like every year, just a little bit better, a little bit better, fill up the building, make sure you have good customers that are happy, they stick around, and it's a successful business, right? - Absolutely. - Not overnight, but pretty quickly, right? - Yeah. And that's I think where having culture, the people behind it, having the process for those people to manage the process rather than managing the workload is all key to success. And then once you add in the technology piece of that, a system like ShipHero on top of that foundation of processes and people that operate it, I mean, that really is kind of the secret sauce, if I ever were to say one, is people, process and systems. - And what I love about when we talk to the people here, shift supervisors, managers here about a process change, they all understand it and they all have critical feedback. So they clearly understand the value of process and also feel like they have a respected voice. 'Cause they're coming back with like, well, what about this situation? What about that? How do we handle it in a productive way? Just making sure. So I think you've been able to instill in the team the value of them thinking through process, not just, "Okay, I do what I'm told." Right? It's more like, "I understand what I'm gonna do." So clearly you've you've explained it to them multiple times, they understand it, and when there's a change, they understand the framework of how the business is gonna run, and could say, they sort of hang this change on that framework and say, "Okay, yeah, this makes sense. I get it, but here's some concerns, here's some challenges." Which is a rarity, I think. In a lot of buildings there's a little bit too much, you know, pushing down of like, "Hey, here's what we're doing." - Yeah. - And it's the same thing that you are doing. It's just maybe you're just bringing 'em along in the process a little bit more, and then it makes them super, instead of fighting the change, it's sort of like, "All right, how do I understand it? How do I make it better? What does that affect me? How's my job gonna be different? What am I looking for on day one when we implement it?" Which makes everyone win. So yeah, I'm always impressed with the team here and how they understand process. - Yeah. - Thank you. Appreciate the conversation. - Absolutely.
Are you curious about the inner workings of an inbound warehouse? How do they keep production running smoothly and efficiently? Aaron visits ShipHero's Las Vegas warehouse and speaks with Inbound Manager Tomasi Manuatu to get the inside scoop on receiving inbound processes and all the industry acronyms. Don't miss this exclusive interview!
- Hey Tomasi. So you're the outbound manager here at our Las Vegas facility - Inbound manager, so what I do-- - Let's start over. Tomasi, Inbound Manager, Las Vegas facility. What does that mean, what's your role? - So what we do is we do the day-to-day operations and receiving. So anything that comes in for trucks, basically receive it, make sure it gets its license plate number. Then it goes to one of our overstock locations, whether it B, C, D. From there it triggers replen and then we replenish the product. A little bit of what else we do is load balance as well. So we send out to our other facilities, balance out our inventory. - Let's talk about the lifecycle. Let's talk about the process, when a, what we call an SP, shipping plan, people call 'em purchase orders. So purchase order is created by the customer. There's a date scheduled. The inbound team books an appointment for when it's gonna show up, right? Then it shows up at the dock. Then your team gets involved, right? - Yes, so basically what would happen is we have the shipping plans, purchase orders that come in. That come hit our docks. As soon as they hit our docks, we open these purchase plans and then we basically go from looking and seeing what product we have, how many we have back order, whatever the case may be for that specific shipping plan. We basically receive the stock in, make sure whether it's allocated to the RSP, RSC, whatever receiving stores location that we have. And then from there we put into overstock. It's a sellable location so that now it triggers and allocates orders so that we can get it replenished. - Yeah, so let's break it down. Let's go a little slower. So product shows up. First, we make sure it's the right product. - Yes. - Phase one. Phase two, the system tells us how many we wanna receive in this building and how many we wanna cross dock to other building. - A hundred percent. - Right? - Yes. - So once we do that, the inbound product, for the most part that goes to overstock. We don't take new product and put it directly on the pickable shelves. We put 'em into sellable, but unpickable locations in the - Overstock location - That's step one? - Yeah, step one yep. - And then how do we know, how does your team know to take some of that stock from the pallet racks and put it in the pickable shelves? - So that will then trigger a replenishment. So you can do it one of two ways. Once we get the shipping plan, we can look and see what's back ordered and then from there we can know like, okay we're gonna move these RSPs, RSCs, whatever they are strictly straight into a pickable location. - Got it, so, if a PO shows up or an SP shows up, and you have a backorder for let's say 20 units, instead of putting it in overstock and then waiting for the replenishment report to tell you to put it away there, you'll just take 20, or maybe you'll take 40 'cause you know you're gonna need more and put it straight in pickable and then take the other ones and tag them to go up into the dock, into the, - Overstock location. - Overstock locations. And then when you think about how to divide your team, so you got receiving, load balance, which is both load balancing off of SPs that came in as well as pulling from the shelves. - Pulling from the shelves. - You've got inventory control, you got replen, where you gotta stock the the pickable shelves for the pickers. How do you think about limited number of people, some days are busy. How do you manage that? - So basically what I'll do is I'll just plan the day out. Like if I know on our calendar, we have a Google calendar which tells us what freights we got coming. So I'll look at that and see through the day, through the week, through the month and just kind of play it by that. See what we have coming in, how many people I know I'm gonna have in receiving, then how many tur operators I'm gonna have to put these into overstock locations. So it all depends 'cause sometimes we could walk in replenishment a lot. Replenishment might not be a lot one day, but we might have a lot of receiving. So it's kind of like delegating everybody into those different types of departments I guess you could say in inbound where it's like, okay you're gonna work on load balance today. We need to get a truck out to ABE this Friday, or whatever the case may be. So it's really just delegating the employees in the inbound to make sure that we have enough everywhere. - And how do you think about what you wanna do during first shift versus the second shift? - So my biggest goal, like when I get in is everything that we got coming in, I wanna receive it. I wanna make sure that it has a license plate number whether it or staging location and then we get it up into the racks just so that all the orders, whatever orders we have backorders can allocate for those. And we get the replen and get it all out the door. 'Cause the main goal is to make sure that outbound is moving. So whatever we get in, I wanna make sure we're proactively looking at it like, okay, we got these backorders. We need to make sure that we put these products out so that we can get the pickers to pick 'em and then we just keep stocking it through. - And normally if pickers say that they're not pulling up orders, we always say it's probably your fault. - It's probably replen, yep, a hundred percent. So I literally, so we have a thing here where it's like I tell Ryan all the time if the pickers are telling us we that we're not pulling the orders or he's telling me that I know it's a replen. So the biggest thing for me is to make sure that I always look at anything that's coming in on SPs that we have that. And then as far as replenishment goes, we always just try to keep it under 10 and make sure that we're cruising through it. - Yeah, constantly feeding the, the outbound machine - A hundred percent, a hundred percent. - All right, what is, I know things don't always go perfect. So what are the biggest problems that you face in your role? - Biggest problem might be something might come in noncompliant and it may, as soon as they hit it to our dock, we might get some of it in and then it's like it'll allocate the orders, but we still receive some other stuff. But some of the stuff might be noncompliant. Sit in, we gotta wait to make sure we're reaching out to the customer through our WAM and getting that situated and then those might sit for maybe a day, maybe a week. We don't really know. So a lot of that is a little bit of frustration 'cause it's like when you get something in, you want to get it going. You wanna get it off your dock. So it's like my biggest goal is always make sure the docks is empty. Whatever's on the dock it's accounted for. - Right. Okay, so you sort of halfway through, you try to scan something. Doesn't scan or it's damaged or it doesn't match the SP. So then you gotta pause. And you got all this stock on the dock. The WAMs are warehouse account manager. You ask him or her to like, hey, talk to the customer. - See what's going on. - See what's up. Tell me what to do. And then the product's still sitting on the dock at that point, right? At what point do you say it's been a while. I need to get, I need this lane, I need this dock space. I'm gonna move this somewhere else, tag it as noncompliant so I get my dock space back? - So we basically got like four flex zones next to our receiving area so that we put our non-compliant there. So whether it sits longer than two, I give it two days. If it sits longer than two days on a dock, I move it straight over to our flex zones, which are non-compliant zones. Then I'm kind of relying on our receiving team, myself as well, to make sure that we're reaching out, following up. Hey just a courtesy follow up, what's going on with this? Just to make sure it doesn't sit in that non-compliance zone longer than it needs to be. - What's your favorite feature in ShipHero? - The hospital. It it, you know like when a picker goes to a location they flag it. So when they flag it it's our job to go figure out what's wrong with it. So we'll go there, we'll visit. we'll do two maybe a, a few things. We'll scan the product, make sure the product scans, see we'll count it, make sure we'll either pick or flag it. 'cause they could've flagged for numerous reasons. The barcode doesn't scan, it's not enough in the location. Maybe need a replen that we didn't get to fast enough. So I think the hospital is good 'cause it proactively lets us know keeps the team on their feet where they're like, okay we need to go for action these locations and make sure they become pickable again. 'cause as you know, if you flag the location, it becomes non pickable. - So yeah, no other pickers get sent there which means orders can wait if they're, that's the only place the product is. - Yep, a hundred percent. - What have you learned recently that's helped you do your job better? - It's really a mixture thing, I think. So load balance has helped a lot. I think I've spent more time with the load balance team within the last month or two. Really just diving in with that and figuring out how can we get these load balance from our dock straight to our overstock location or pickable locations - So I'm at the inbound load balance. So we get a truck from ABE and you want to get that on the shelf without any work. - Any work, yeah. So it, so like you do have your pros and cons with it, but the biggest thing I think is like it makes it so much easier just to literally just scan from one point and then scan right back into your pickable location. You know, so it makes it a lot easier for us to move the product. Like we're not having to receive anything really. We're just really, boom, it's in our system. Boom, it goes to a pickable location. - Even though it's from one building to another it's actually just an inventory transfer. - Yep, yep. - All right, perfect. So it's been a year that you've been here. What's the evolution been like? - When I first got here, I'm gonna be really honest with you. When I got here, everybody was kind of working anywhere. There was no designated areas. So when we got here, it was me and when Ryan got here it's really just delegating the fact of making sure that we had this approach where it was like we're gonna designate these areas for certain things. We're gonna clean up our dock. We're gonna put our shelving up, make sure these customers have their inventory here, certain places, you know. So a lot has changed. I think the biggest thing is getting the inventory corrected, cycle counting the building our full audit and really just taking ownership of our inventory. I think that was the thing that I was kind of pulling teeth with when I first got here. It was like trying to figure out what do we have here in the building. And to say a year from now till now, it's like we've came a long way. I can actually say like if I send someone to a location, I know some, I know it's there, you know? - So good inventory visibility. - Yeah, a hundred percent. - So what do you, what do you wanna see improve from now till a year from now? - Honestly, just start, just continue to build off of what we got going here. I think the biggest thing is we're making strides and making room for everything. So we have a lot more customers we're planning to get in so I wanna make sure that we have the capacity to have that like we're getting containers left and right. So really just building off of keeping our inventory accurate and then having that space to always keep the customers bringing their product in. - And if you can help train a new person stepping into the the role of inventory manager for the first time or inbound manager for the first time, what would you tell 'em? - I would tell 'em keep a level head and continue to just work through it. Inventory never ends so you're not gonna get it all in one shot. So it's something that, it's steady evolving. It's always something new. So just keep a level head and just continue to work at it. And it's honestly, it's really like a competition really with yourself, trying to make sure that every day you're gonna find something new. Every day things might not go the way they did yesterday. So just keep a level head. That's what I say. - And the building's definitely improved in the time. You've been here, Ryan's been here. I think the team solidified, we've got some good stability and we've got some really good team members and the results show. Thank you, you're doing great. - Thank you. - Appreciate it.
Order management can be daunting, but it becomes a breeze with ShipHero's Warehouse Management System. Our comprehensive platform includes automation rules that handle all the tedious work. Our multi-warehouse allocation feature makes inventory management across various locations more efficient. The Hero board offers real-time data on all warehouse metrics when you need an overview of your operations. Say goodbye to manual processes and embrace effective order management with this informative ShipHero video.
Today, we'll dive into the life cycle and management of orders in ShipHero’s software, designed to make your life easier. We’ll cover everything from importing and managing orders, automation rules, multi-warehouse allocation, the hero board, and more. Let's get started! Whether through the ShipHero Web Dashboard or Mobile App, our versatile platform ensures your team can access all the tools they need whenever they need them. After connecting your sales channels to ShipHero, orders automatically import. You can also upload orders in bulk through CSV, create them manually within ShipHero, or use our API. To ensure seamless order fulfillment, you’ll set shipping method mappings and use cut off times to dictate when the order needs to ship and which shipping labels should be printed at the end of the fulfillment process. Unlock the power of automation rules to streamline your order management. An extensive list of automation rule triggers and actions can be applied to orders as they enter ShipHero. These rules can be used to customize your fulfillment workflows automatically at scale. No decision making required for your pick and pack teams on the warehouse floor. Use multi-warehouse allocation rules, to dictate where items should be fulfilled from. Much like automation rules, Multi-Warehouse allocation rules have Conditions and Actions. Set up logic that works best for your business. Let ShipHero route an order to the closest warehouse or split across multiple warehouses based on inventory availability. Customize your view and filter orders based on a variety of attributes, including tags, allowing for easy order search, bulk edits, and exports that save you time. ShipHero empowers you to address problem orders fast. Easily find orders that are ready to ship, have holds, or need adjustments and even add notes for the team. Orders that are On Hold won't be seen by your picking or packing team until the holds have been cleared. Whether it's a Fraud hold, incorrect address, payment issue, or operator hold, once the hold has been cleared the order will be fulfilled like any other.As with all changes made to an order, the date, user, and reason for the change will be recorded under the Order History section. These detailed logs let you know exactly who picked and packed the order as well. You can quickly sort and filter orders, even by fulfilled status, which is great for your CS team to check in on statuses to keep customers informed. ShipHero was designed to get orders in and out of your doors quickly and accurately. The system auto generates batches of orders and optimizes picking routes through the warehouse to increase productivity. You'll need to have enough inventory in pickable locations to fulfill your orders. Luckily, ShipHero's mobile replenishment makes this process seamless. It shows which SKUs need to be replenished, how many orders need each item, and enables the team on the floor to quickly transfer them. Here you have a personalized dashboard that gives you an at-a-glance view of your fulfillment operations. View it at home, on the go, or share it on the big screen in the warehouse. The Hero board also has a live shipping view that shows your top pickers + packers, how many orders in total you have shipped that day, how many more you need to ship, and the rate you need to ship to meet your goals. ShipHero's Live Shipping Board keeps track of the day's work and lets pickers and packers enjoy a little competition. It's a great way to gamify your warehouse activity while keeping everything in check! Use WorkforceHero alongside the Hero Board to manage your labor more effectively within the warehouse. See what tasks your employees are working on in real-time, easily assign workers to different jobs, track their time on task, manage special projects and analyze historical data to improve resource planning. Order management doesn't end when the package leaves your warehouse. PostHero provides insight to carrier performance, helps you track against delivery SLAs, picks up delivery notifications supported by shipping carriers, and shows orders that are lost, stuck, or delayed. Check out the links in the description for more detailed videos on other powerful ShipHero features such as PostHero, WorkforceHero, and Hero Board. We hope this walkthrough of ShipHero's Order Management features helps you streamline and boost your operational efficiency. Check out our website and YouTube channel for more feature walkthroughs and tutorials. Remember to follow us on social media for updates on new releases and industry news! Thanks for watching.
It’s time to upgrade your warehouse operating system 😎
Join us on a journey across the US as our CEO, Aaron, drops in to a few of our ShipHero warehouses to uncover the people, processes, and technology that power our fulfillment network. We won’t hold back…in this series, we’re sharing the method we use to keep customers happy and run profitably - the key to running any 3PL at scale.
Be warned - there’s no fluff here. You’re going to want to have your pencil sharpened and notebook ready.
[Hehehe] Let me get the mic on. Oh, I got the mic on. [Snaps fingers] I’m going to start over! If you're working to take your warehouse from good to great, you're going to want to watch this series. Hi, my name is Aaron Rubin. I'm the Founder and CEO of ShipHero. You might know us for our warehouse management software, and we do have the warehouse management software that is the most popular and highest rated for eCommerce brands between five and $100 million a year revenue and the 3PLs that serve them. What you might not know is we operate over a million square feet of warehouses in North America serving mid and large sized eCommerce brands. I'm in one of those facilities today in Jacksonville, Florida. You'll hear from the general managers in our buildings across the United States, as well as people on the floor and our remote ops team as we show you what they do to satisfy our customers needs and run a profitable at scale 3PL. Doing what we do is nothing magical, right? Anybody can take a product, put it in a box and give it to a carrier. It's really about the relationship that you build with those customers and being able to follow through with what you say you're going to do. If you have stragglers or orders that are still sitting and waiting, coming in the following morning, that's kind of when you want to start looking into that second shift or replen. You know, you don't want slow starts in the morning, you want to come in, you want to rock and roll, because that first hour or two of your shift is what's going to make that shipping day. Finding those issues before it stops production on the floor. Through the queue management side of it, it's ensuring that each facility has work consistently throughout the day so there's no downtime. You don't want to over bill your clients either. They don't like that very much. So because this is your source of truth, meaning this tracking system, if it's incorrectly tracked because of the human element, you need to make sure that you're checking both ends of those transactions so that when someone's out of the building but still, quote, billing hours, you don't want that to happen. Everything in a warehouse should have a flow. It comes in the building. It comes out of the building. Right now, our pickers start at that end of the building and they finish all the way at the far end, and they put their totes, their carts completed over in this area. However, speed is a key factor here as well. If I want to get the numbers out the door, I need some people who are efficient and know how to work with some speed. It's a trial and error basis. We see who's out there. We see who looks good, we see who works efficiently and things like that. And we'll bring them back here to the bulk department. As soon as they hit our docks, we open these purchase plans and we basically go from looking and seeing what product we have, how many we have back ordered or whatever the case may be for that specific shipping plan. We basically receive the stock in and make sure whether it's allocated to our RSP, RSC, whatever receiving staging location that we have. Then from there we put it into overstock. We're excited to take you on this journey. We're going to go through several of our buildings and show you the best practices we use that will hopefully help you take your existing warehouse that's running well and make it run even better.
Take your picking powers to the next level with ShipHero’s Multi-Item Batch picking feature. In this video, Product Manager Val will walk you through how easy it is to pick a cart full of orders with just an iPad and a handheld scanner.Val will demonstrate how to:
Picking efficiency and accuracy are key elements in any eCommerce warehouse - see how easy it is with ShipHero’s WMS. Watch now!
Hello, everyone. This is Val. I'm at our West Palm Beach warehouse today. And today we're going to take a look at multi item batch picking. This is one of the fundamental features when working with ShipHero. Anyone at your warehouse that’s going to be doing picking is going to need to learn how to do this. Good news is it's very simple, easy to learn, and a few quick steps and you'll be on your way to picking. All right. So the first step for multi-item batch picking is you need to log into your mobile app. From here you will go to the navigation bar on the left hand side and under the picking section, you'll see there's two options multi item batch picking and single item batch picking. Now, I know you're curious what single item batch picking, but we're going to discuss that in another video. For this one, we're going to look at multi item batch picking. So, multi-item batch picking is very useful when you have orders with more than one product. Each tote which we're going to go over, will have one order in it and can have multiple items. When you start with your multi item batch picking, it’ll ask you a quantity of totes you're going to pick. This setting can be set by default for the user, but today we're going to do 25. You might be wondering why 25 totes? Well, as you'll see here on my cart, I have 25 totes, so this would be 25 orders, five rows of five. You also see that these are very colorful. While the colors aren't mandatory, they definitely do help visually for your pickers because when you're picking, you'll say red tote. So your eyes will go up to the red totes. It will be much easier to find them. So this is just a good little trick when you're making your carts to have them color coordinated. It's not required, but it definitely helps. So we're going to do 25 totes, 25 orders, and we will start picking. So what you'll see here is ShipHero pulled a bunch of items for us to pick for these orders. You can track your progress up on top, but this is our main screen. You'll see how many you need to pick, what location to go to, an image of the item to make it clear you're looking at the right one. But of course, we're going to scan as well. And then how many you have on hand. All right. Now that our batch has loaded, we're going to go to the first item. So I see my location here, A-01-01-02. So, we're going to go head on over there. When you get to your location, you want to scan the item, make sure you have the right item. It's a good best practice. So let's scan that in. There you go. And now it's going to ask me to pick a tote. So this is the first item that I'm picking. I really can go with any tote because none of the totes are full yet, so I'll just go over here. Yellow 6. All right. I got my one item. It says that I've picked one. You're going to place it in the tote and then you want to confirm I put it in the correct tote. Just double checking. You're going to scan again, which will save your pick. And now it's asking me to choose another tote for this same item. This is for another order. So would be a different tote. Let's go here. All right. It says pick one unit. It's going to have me scan it to confirm that it's the right item. And then confirm the tote. All right, now we go to our next item, so I'll look at our next location. A-01-01-03. And it wants us to pick four which we actually can see here ahead of time how many we'll need in total. I don't know yet which orders these are for so this is is why you want to follow the app, but we will grab our first one. But we could keep in mind that we're going to need four in total. Scan one in, make sure it's the right item. Sometimes items could look very similar, especially with t shirts and you don’t want to grab the wrong one. So this is telling me to go to yellow six, meaning this is for the same order as our first item was from. So we're just going to scan in yellow six to confirm it's the right to perfect. Put that in there. All right. We're going to get three more of these. All right. We're going to pick a new tote. All right. It's asking me for one. It's going to have me scan this in again. So I did the first scan when we went to the location to confirm it was correct. But now ShipHero wants to make sure I got the correct one the next time around too. Awesome. We're going to put that in our tote. Scan the tote to confirm. All right. Now, we're going to go back to this one. It will tell me which tote to go to. Scan the item. Black 85. I've confirmed the item and confirm the tote And now we pick another one. I think you're going to get the hang of this. We’ll go to yellow 36. Confirm the item. Put it in your tote. Confirm the tote. All right. Now that we put all of our totes in totes, we're going to go pick our next item. All right, so ShipHero is guiding us to location A-01-02-01. But let's play around a bit. Let's say I'm not paying attention and I try to scan another item. Remember, scanning is quite important here. So I go and I try to scan another tote because maybe I thought we needed five. I don’t know. What you'll see here is it’ll say that there is no product matching this is expected because we already picked all the totes that we needed. They're already in their totes so we can put that back and move on and then go to the correct item and scan that in. So we are going to need four, this is telling us it has to go to yellow six, it’s for the same order with the tote and the snacks. But let's scan the wrong location and just see what happens Ah! You'll get an error, why, because you have to put it in the right location. This is why we want to scan. So you put this in yellow six and it’ll save your pick. All right, let's go get another one. Going to scan to confirm we got the right item and it will tell us which one to put this in. And we repeat, those that pick all day are very fast with this process. Let me tell you, it's impressive. If you have the hero board set up, you can actually track how fast, who the top pickers are. Kind of make a game out of it. I like games, personally. Yellow 36. All right. Well, I'm going to jump ahead and pick the rest of these items and I'll see you in a bit. All right. Now, it was all done. That was easy. Right now, we're going to hand this off to our packers and get these 25 orders out the door. We'll show you how to pack these in another video. Thank you so much for watching!
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