WAREHOUSE PRODUCTIVITY · EXPERT PERSPECTIVE
Late warehouse dispatches: adding people may not unblock the flow
Busy does not always mean productive
The chain opens more stores. Replenishment orders rise. The warehouse starts dispatching late. A familiar response is to recruit and add overtime. Yet after staffing increases, goods still leave late. Costs rise and stores still ask where their deliveries are. In fulfillment, activity is not the same as productivity.
Are people working or waiting?
People may be waiting for pick-face replenishment, inventory discrepancy confirmation, checking and packing, document printing, or reprioritization as urgent orders interrupt. Adding staff to a blocked process can lengthen queues. As an illustration, faster picking may send more goods to an already overloaded packing table. Goods move from waiting to be picked to waiting to be packed; dispatch throughput may not improve, staging space fills and vehicles can still miss departure times.
Five reviews before hiring more people
First, measure waiting time as well as working time: how long does an order take from release to dispatch readiness, and where does it wait? Second, identify the activity limiting overall throughput: picking, replenishment, checking/packing or dispatch. Third, design work around store requirements: align pick waves with routes and departure times, position items by pick frequency and replenish before peaks. Fourth, reduce rework by standardizing locations, units, item codes and shortage handling. Fifth, add people according to actual workload, skills, activities and time windows once the flow is clear.
Assess the whole flow
For retail chains, the impact extends beyond the warehouse: stores lack saleable goods, supplementary deliveries increase and reconciliation takes longer. SCO supports fulfillment reviews, bottleneck diagnosis, work organization and KPIs for productivity, cost, accuracy and delivery timing.
A question worth asking
Does your warehouse lack people, or do people lack the conditions they need to work effectively?
English translation/adaptation of the Vietnamese article. Read the author’s original LinkedIn post ↗