Numerous articles and reports have been published around which metrics or KPIs are the right ones to use in an organization. And every time the conclusion is (not surprisingly) that a KPI has to reflect the overall company strategy in order to influence people in the organization in the right way and not be counter-productive. So Wal-Mart would focus on measuring cost reduction, Zara on speed and time-to-market. So does this mean we don’t need to measure anything else?
Automation and Flexibility – a contradiction in term?
What do you associate with the word AUTOMATION? As a warehouse management professional you would often equal automation with a complex material handling equipment (MHE) system including conveyors, sorters, high bay storage cranes etc. And most of us looking for such solutions think of it as a black box, a closed system supplied by an automation vendor to meet strictly defined input/output requirements. But this is where I want to raise a red flag.



