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One area of staff retention and warehouse productivity that is frequently overlooked is the effect of ergonomics on production. Consciously or not, ergonomics pervades every aspect of facility management.

While some managers still look at ergonomics as a form of regulatory burden or reactionary response to a problem, successful leaders understand its ongoing importance. A proactive ergonomic focus helps organizations to maximize productivity and improve employee retention.

Prioritizing ergonomics drives management innovation in numerous ways.

There are a lot of innovations in manufacturing getting press in recent years, but most of them relate to the improvement of productivity through process improvement – continuous improvement, supply chain management, culture and developing talent. But there is one radically innovative technology that is flying under the radar but is already poised to bring the sci-fi future into today’s factories.

While logistics is typically forward-facing, focusing on the details and costs associated with getting items produced and delivered to end users, reverse logistics is concerned with the analysis of products going in the opposite direction.

Moving items backwards in the supply chain is how companies recoup value from products that are not useful in their current state or location, making reverse logistics just as important for effective supply chain management.

Manufacturing is a broad term that is thrown around loosely in the news and in the public domain. 

We've heard for decades about the "decline of manufacturing", but depending on how you measure it, it's not always clear there has been a decline. Frequently a decline of jobs in manufacturing is reported as implying a decline in production, but it is often a result of higher productivity that comes from more automation, improved supply chain logistics and systems. This itself can lead to a decline in employment. 

Reverse logistics is already a fast-growing element of manufacturing and distribution, but lacks the wider understanding it deserves. As a result, many businesses that are unwittingly executing on reverse logistics are missing an opportunity to make it a smooth, efficient and potentially profitable part of their business as they would expect from other process areas.

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While many companies are just catching their breath from recent holiday shipments, this New England DC is in the midst of ramping up for its annual busy season - Spring Golf!

Making New Year’s resolutions is something we all do, or joke about, or both. But regardless of which category you think you belong in, there’s no question that the New Year is a good time to re-examine how you do things and implement improvements in the workplace.  But where do you start? Every year, the list of “we should…” is a long one, but here are a few ideas that we think are a good place to start:

There is perhaps no more important part of your facility than your dock. It’s the start – and the end – of your day, your end-to-end process, and your accounting for your shipments! So making the processes that depend on your dock as smooth and efficient as possible gives everything in-between a better foundation for success.

This year has been another banner year for all of us and our customers at Newcastle Systems, and with the short week we have for the Thanksgiving holiday, we wanted to take a moment to take stock and share some of what we are thankful for:

Last week we talked about a few common myths regarding Quality Control (see “5 Myths About Quality Control”), but one myth we did not cover was the one about Quality Assurance being the same thing. It’s not uncommon to hear them used interchangeably, and in a closed-loop environment of a large facility, it might not make a difference if everyone agrees to what the definitions are in their environment. But if you ever plan to use outside resources in any way, or want to make sure you are on the same page with suppliers and customers, it might be a good idea to understand the differences and apply them accordingly.