After investing in a Warehouse Management System to track inventory and drive warehouse processes, another type of warehouse efficiency software that companies use is a Labor Management System. A LMS has different labor costing and productivity functions. Warehousing is a very labor intensive operation that relies heavily on perfect staffing to achieve great results. Software developers have been quick to develop programs that specifically manage and track labor metrics and provide insight into overall warehouse efficiency.
Understanding Labor
Year after year, labor costs in your warehouse creep upwards and you are hard pressed to find ways to keep them down. The eternal struggle often presents itself in precariously balanced schedules, but few managers take the time to actually understand the causes contributing to their growing labor costs. A Labor Management System can solve this problem by showing you a breakdown of which tasks are actually value added tasks within the warehouse versus how much time is being wasted waiting for work or doing menial jobs.
Improving Processes
Warehouse efficiency software doesn't just help you understand your labor costs better, it also helps you improve on them. Most modern labor costing software can replace most of the functions of industrial engineers by providing more thorough data in real time. The technique of testing and monitoring new processes for efficacy is down to just a few short days rather than months of experimentation.
Regaining Control
Once you understand where all of that extra labor cost is going, and you find ways to make improvements that will decrease your labor costs, you can finally regain control of your labor costing and productivity. Warehouse efficiency software gives you the chance to take back lost time and turn it into productive and meaningful work hours. It allows you to see into the heart of your labor management and determine whether or not your systems are positively reflecting your labor goals. It also gives you a clear path to keep pushing productivity limits in the future.
Warehouse efficiency software uses many angles to approach the problem of efficiency within your warehouse. The labor costing and productivity angle is the one that could be costing you the most even as you feel obligated to continue writing complex schedules. This software helps you streamline your labor decisions and trim out all waste to ensure that every penny spent on your labor pool is a worthwhile cause. It also gives you the chance to test new labor strategies without going too deep with every change. This way you can see the ripple effects of your decisions and weigh them against your broader goals.
