What to Expect When You Go Live
Go live day for warehouse automation rarely goes perfectly. Learn how a slow ramp up and provider support get you through the early speed bumps.
By SOLUTIONS COMMUNITY
There will be speed bumps, but with your provider, you will get through them.
Adding warehouse automation to your facility is a long and winding journey. You begin with a search for the right solution and provider, select that partner, perform months of preparation, training, testing, and finally, go live. But the journey is far from over at that point. In fact, at the go live point, you’re only partway there.
It’s key to understand that on go-live day, things won’t always go exactly as planned. Expect some speed bumps that you will need to address. When you pull the switch and go live, all the test scenarios you’ve been working on will get you far—but not 100 percent bug-free. Day one will likely prove out at about 85 to 90 percent of what you expect from the prior testing.
If you’re working with the right partner, the good news is that they won’t disappear when you go live. They will likely stay on site for four to eight weeks, working to support your new operations and technology, depending on your system’s complexity. That should give you some peace of mind as you begin to officially implement the project you’ve been working on for months.
Day one should be a minimal ramp up, aiming to bring your system online on a limited basis. Hopefully your operators are well trained and ready to use the new equipment, but you will still want to ease them in slowly as well so that they can get the hang of operations. In an ecommerce environment, you’ll want to aim for about 10 to 15 percent of your peak-day volume for both labor efficiency and order rates. You want to build to the peak but not start there. That’s because every small issue that you might have overlooked during testing will be amplified during go live.
During this slow ramp up, you’ll find several unexpected issues arising. Often these will show up in the form of mis-identified SKU quantities, or exception handling. For instance, if you were expecting 10 items in an order and only have nine, at a slower pace, you can address that and create an exception rule.
Other common exceptions that may manifest during the early go-live phase include finding inventory in the wrong location and having to course correct. Or perhaps an employee scans the wrong item into a tote. You may have been thorough in testing, but small nuances exist and will reveal themselves in the early days of implementation.
One reason for this is that you are basing your design criteria off historical data. But buying trends change and data sets do, too, as a result. What was true for a design six months ago may not work when you go live. As long as you’ve started slowly, that’s ok. You will adjust and course correct.
You may get an error message, for instance. Working with your provider, you’ll examine your rules and see where that falls. Maybe you’ll need a new rule. What’s important is that you flag the situation and figure out a standard operating procedure that fits the situation.
You should also expect to have some issues from your warehouse associates on the floor as you go live. Many have been working on the same processes for months or years, even, and the new equipment changes much of what they know. Again, your testing scenarios will have gone a long way to help your staff with their level of confidence, too. Still, this is a good time to manage your team’s expectations and ensure they don’t get frustrated with the transition to automation.
Communication from management to the associates is critical during this phase. You want to ensure your team is buying in, feeling confident in the new equipment, and perhaps most important—help them to understand that the new automation and processes are here to help them. Watch for frustrated team members and check in with them regularly during this slower ramp up phase. That way you’ll be well positioned when you start heading to 100 percent and operations speed up.
Your provider will continue to be on hand for some time. Their role is to monitor the systema and ensure it is healthy. They will make recommendations on how to improve your efficiency during go live. This will include adjustments to the SOPs as those small, unexpected nuances creep up. In certain cases, they may also take measurements as your associates interact with the system, determining their working speeds and tailoring the software and system to that cadence.
Understand that go live throughputs wont’ match those in the future. This is a breaking in process for everyone, and you should not treat it as a sprint. After easing in, you’ll be well positioned to take full advantage of all your new system can provide.
If you have questions about going live, reach out MHI’s Solutions Community for answers.
Contributor: Greg Meyne, enVista
Reviewed by Solutions Community Marketing Committee
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