Parcel - August 2008 - (Page 22) Whether your project should take a few weeks for a smaller adoption or several months or more for a more intensive engagement, your timeline will be impacted by the amount of preparation and planning that you devote up front and the discipline you enforce during the project itself. Regardless of where you fall on this continuum, careful planning and due diligence from the beginning (selecting the right vendor) through planning (realistic, achievable milestones) to deployment (mitigate risks rather than manage to exceptions), will help you keep your timeline under control. »What is involved in switching over to automation? We’ve talked a bit about some of the factors to be considered in the decision process towards automation, as well as the phases that would typically be gone through to justify, select and successfully implement an automation solution from a process and planning perspective. Some other important areas to review prior to throwing the switch and turning on the automation include the people and testing aspects, as well as start-up risk mitigation planning. Process & Cultural Changes — Automation changes processes and that impacts people, some of whom will inevitably handle the situation better than others. Rather than just make an announcement at the daily shift supervisors’ meeting that things will be changing, lay the groundwork for the process — and likely cultural — changes well ahead of implementation. Get people from the floor involved as early as possible. Training — Everyone intuitively knows the value of training, but for a myriad of reasons it doesn’t always get the attention that it deserves. Develop a training program addressing all of your resources, including managers, super-users and the folks on the floor. Prepare refresher materials and cheat sheets. Don’t just train at one shot and think you’re set — make it an ongoing process. Leverage your team members that have been trained to help out with others. Realistic Testing — Do your testing before flipping the switch. Test with real data under realistic conditions. Test hard with volumes significantly greater than you anticipate hitting in production. Be creative in attempts to break the system with potential realworld scenarios. Drive testing out of the operations side of the house. Start-Up Risk Mitigation — The real question here is what are you going to do to ensure that product gets out the door? Prepare contingency plans in the event that not everything goes miraculously well. Line up additional staffing in the event that you need bodies to push things through. Arrange for extra operational hours if possible. Communicate excessively — internally and externally. Let customers know you are cutting over to new systems. Talk to your transportation partners. As cliché as this is, plan for the unexpected! Be sure to join us in the third and final installment, which includes an interview with Paul Loebbaka, Managing Director of Fulfillment for Alta Resources. You can find Part I of our series online at www.PARCELindustry.com. Dennis Dearth is Director of Technical Services for TranSystems | ESYNC. He can be reached at dldearth@transystems.com or by phone at 419-842-2210. ■ 22 August 2008 www.rbpub.com http://www.PARCELindustry.com http://www.rbpub.com
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