Getting the Best Out of Legacy Automation

Building a warehousing business is never easy, but when your business is transitioning towards growth while relying on outdated systems, it can become much more difficult. In this article, we cover the strategy we’ve seen perform the highest for our clients in this exact scenario. Building an operational profile that will stand the test of time and technological obsolescence should be a cornerstone of automated warehousing, but what do you do when those who wrote the profile are no longer available? Read on to find out.

Understandably there is a significant market focus and support available to organisations as they move to adopt some form of mechanically based automation within the warehousing footprint. What is not as readily available is support and tips for those early adopting organisations who, having invested substantially six to ten years previously, find themselves in the position of needing to get more out of a platform that could only have half a decade or more of usable life left in it. 

Tackling this problem can be challenging given the decision makers who drove the original program may have moved on, taking with them their foundational knowledge. Or it could be that the current group of managers and supervisors have not been equipped with the tools needed to logically break down the problem and enhance the solution. Wherever you are starting from, if you are facing the need to enhance performance, where should one start? Thankfully a few straightforward steps can get you started. 

Step 1: Confirm if you are getting the anticipated bang for buck. Go back to the documented beginning, dig out the business case or technical requirements and list out the underpinning assumptions that drove design performance. The main things to look for are the historical order profiles, volume maximums and time of day profiles and then matching them to today’s operational profile. Do you remain aligned or has there been significant drift? If you remain aligned then proceed to Step 2, if not go to Step 3.

Step 2: Go out and observe the actual system in action. Look for; 

• ‘process drift’ from the original intended method of operation and how it might be corrected. Digging out the G Pro to provide a larger sample of observations can assist. 
• customer value-adds been applied that may be slowing throughput levels 
• how the waves you are running impacting throughput

Step 3: Check the system fundamentals are healthy. In particular: 

• look for evidence of under maintenance that is reducing availability times 
• look for structural bottlenecks which may be arising in the accumulation lanes, lifts, key diverts, merges, printers, carton erectors or liders. Do you need to upgrade key pieces of the system? 
• check for network performance. Is bandwidth increasing latency and in turn slowing system performance?

Step 4: After completing these three steps, sit back, make a tea or coffee, go for a walk and think on the problem, reflect on what the initial learnings are telling you, and write down a list of your first thoughts for remedial actions.

You are now on the journey to maximise the useful life of your platform. After these four simple steps, how is your warehouse performing? Do you need to go back to a particular step and tweak some numbers, or re-analyse performance to identify bottlenecks, or even start from step one again? Determining your position and best next steps can seem daunting, so if you ever need an expert’s opinion, Siecap’s highly experienced consultants are only a phone call away. Reach out today at siecap.com.au/contact-us/ to get our experts’ educated opinions on how to resolve your warehousing issues.