Logistics Office Automation – Taking the pressure off
A busy logistics office controls the movement of real people, with real goods operating in real time.
Speak to many people, no two days are the same – well except for the “Admin”.
What is life like in Logistics?
Incidents happen. There is a lot of skill and knowledge needed to overcome challenges.
Dealing with the pressure of goods moving in / out of warehouses, trucks making collections and deliveries. It is where the plans meet reality!
Lots of phone calls, emails and of course the admin. It can be a really rewarding job in terms of the sense of achievement.
Meetings, speak with colleagues, clients, suppliers and getting management approval – good communication, then there is the ”Admin”, to document and record everything.
Depending on the part of the logistics operation being handled there can be many different IT systems involved such as Warehouse Management System (WMS), Yard Management System (YMS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Finance, HR, Customs, Transport Management System (TMS) plus of course emails and Excel spreadsheets,
From orders being processed, through inventory management to shipment tracking and monitoring there is a lot of data flowing between a customer Purchase Order (PO) and the final customer Invoice payment.
How much of that data handling requires “Manual” work on computers?
No matter how big the company
For the business to operate, there are many business processes. From SME to Global Enterprise everybody has processes.
When a new recruit joins the office team of a logistics business, they need to learn how to perform the various processes, what compliance checks are essential, when management approval is required and how the audit trail is created.
As staff gain experience, the interest in performing routine admin tasks tends to decline. Such staff want to use their knowledge to investigate and solve problems.
One way to enable staff to progress is to recruit junior staff to perform the admin tasks for them, an alternative approach is to automate the admin tasks so that nobody does the “Boring Admin”.
Using Automation for office tasks – Take the Pressure Off
Automation using software robots replicates the activities a person would manually perform on a computer.
While automation may incorporate some AI elements, many automations can be achieved without using AI.
Once implemented, automation frees up staff to focus on exceptions, unique scenarios, and activities that enhance quality.
Interactions with IT systems typically involve reading from a screen, typing on a keyboard, and moving and clicking a mouse. A software robot can perform all these actions: it can read from the screen, simulate keyboard typing, and mimic mouse movements and clicks.
By interacting with existing IT systems in the same way a person would, software robots allow employees to redirect their efforts to more valuable tasks instead of mundane, repetitive work.
Integrating automation into business processes offers several benefits:
- 24/7 Operation: Automation enables continuous operation, without the limitations of human working hours.
- Flexibility: It can handle fluctuations in workload efficiently, managing peaks and troughs seamlessly.
- Reduced Dependency on Staff Availability: With automation, there’s less reliance on staff being present, ensuring processes run smoothly even during absences.
By incorporating automation, businesses can significantly boost productivity, enabling staff to contribute more strategically and add greater value.
Checking for issues
The best logistic operations are well planned. Everything is resourced in a timely fashion and things run smoothly.
Active monitoring and tracking are required to ensure that any incidents and deviations from the plan are alerted as soon as possible. Once a problem is identified, it’s impact can be assessed and potential mitigation action taken.
The need for pro-active checking can be high and in some cases, relying on notifications from 3rd party systems is not sufficient. Some staff in logistics offices spend many hours checking on the state of the operations.
This type of “Re-assurance” checking consumes effort but only delivers the value of “Things are OK”.
It is an ideal task for automation. Software Robots operating from on their own systems can make the checks just like a person would perform.
Staff can be alerted when their input is required. They can be alerted when a 3rd party system becomes un-available and therefore not able to send notifications.
When an issue does occur, it can often require mitigation to applied to several items quickly.
For example, notifying 50 customers that a container ship is not going to dock for 24 hours. 50 emails each specific about the goods that are on the ship. Re-scheduling the trucks to pick-up the containers, etc.
Automation of processes used in mitigation can often free time for logistics staff when they are under the most pressure.
Take the pressure, let’s wait to Automate
The business is operating, everybody is busy, let’s delay any automation.
Nobody disputes that Automation will deliver benefits, why would management not want them soon?
Is it possible to keep asking staff to cope with the pressure and do that extra work?
Staff have lives. They go home at the end of each day and the business hopes they will come back the next day. How many business processes could operate without staff or on a skeleton team?
#supplychain #logistics #productivity
#businessbeyondautomation
Article Author
David Martin
Managing Director, Ether Solutions
https://www.ether-solutions.co.uk/
