Staff shortage Successfully operate and expand (intra-) logistics despite limited staff

Finding suitable employees is becoming increasingly difficult in logistics. Applicant numbers are decreasing, employee demands are growing, and it is becoming more challenging to maintain or even expand operations. However, various measures can help reduce dependence on the existing workforce and expand warehouses even with declining personnel hours.

Logistics is facing a serious personnel problem, and even the economic downturn has not brought the expected relief. The good news is: we can do something about it. Of course, companies can strive to become more attractive to applicants, or workers can be recruited from abroad. But much more important is to design internal and logistical processes in such a way that they can be maintained or even expanded with fewer staff hours, thereby becoming more efficient overall. Numerous machine solutions are already available to take over time-consuming, monotonous, exhausting, or stressful tasks, allowing employees to be deployed more profitably.

Warehouse anatomy offers diverse opportunities

Moreover, the warehouse anatomy itself offers diverse opportunities to make workflows smoother, safer, and more efficient. Sometimes, it's not additional staff that is needed to satisfactorily handle tasks within the desired timeframe, but simply a different arrangement of warehouse goods and work materials.

It starts with reducing walking distances, considering ergonomics and work safety from the beginning, and using smart solutions smartly. Often, an external perspective helps to critically question and make processes more efficient.

Utilize external perspective

For manufacturers of customized shelves and storage solutions, it would be obvious, for example, to rely on their own solutions when designing locations. However, this means valuable ideas are lost. Important decisions should consider looking beyond the usual horizons and seeking professional advice. After all, few perspectives are as candid and valuable as those from the outside.

This approach is also important in customer discussions. Often, customers have already envisioned a specific solution for themselves, perhaps wanting to request a custom adjustment or a discount. However, in a personal conversation, a completely different solution may prove to be much more sensible for tackling the tasks and hurdles encountered in day-to-day operations. And often, valuable staff hours or expensive operating resources can be permanently saved in the process.

Save up to 80 percent of personnel hours

An internationally operating steel corporation, for example, faced the challenge of procuring special collection containers for the transportation of red-hot production waste. Previously, transportation was very complex and carried out in several stages to meet the particularly demanding safety requirements in the high-temperature range. With specifically developed containers that can be emptied safely and quickly without losing their shape due to the hot content, the company was able to save the labor of three employees in this area, allowing them to focus on other tasks today. Additionally, the new solution eliminates the need for a skip loader for the emptying process. It is evident that in the long term, not only many staff hours but also high material costs are saved. Savings of up to 80 percent of the formerly spent staff hours are not uncommon. This is achieved by reducing walking paths, eliminating unnecessary actions, or making processes more ergonomic. The necessity to recruit new workers is thereby eliminated.

Demands of young employees are growing

At the same time, it is repeatedly observed that a great deal is done to retain employees within a company. Not only because they have become established and proven profitable for a company, but also, and especially, because there are often simply no alternatives. Young recruits do not arrive at the same rate necessary to maintain ongoing operations, let alone further develop or expand them. Additionally, young workers today have completely different demands than ten or fifteen years ago. Shorter weekly working hours are demanded just as frequently and naturally, along with more vacation days. Overtime is no longer taken for granted and, if done, is meticulously compensated later. Furthermore, the number of sick days in logistics and intralogistics remains high. All these factors reduce available staff hours and virtually necessitate a more efficient use of the existing workforce. Companies therefore come up with many ideas and take on significant challenges to retain employees. Depending on task design and the staff base, this effort yields very different results.

Retain experienced employees with innovative solutions

One of the largest food retailers in Germany faced the challenge of making an employee's work area more ergonomic. This employee sorted defective pallets using a pallet inverter in a logistics center that supplies around 400 supermarkets in the region with goods. These pallets would have unnecessarily jeopardized the reliable and safe onward transport of food, beverages, and non-food items. While manual restacking takes up a lot of time, this process is accomplished in a few minutes with a pallet inverter.

The palletized goods are driven into the device. Then the goods are clamped by two clamping tables and subsequently turned upside down, allowing the pallet on top to be easily replaced. In our example, the employee only had to lift the defective Epal pallet from the upside-down goods and replace it with a new one. A task that is relatively effortless for a healthy, young person. However, for the employee, who was over fifty and could not lift more than five kilograms after a hip operation, it was an impossibility. Epal pallets weigh between 20 and 24 kilograms, depending on the type of wood used. Thus, after his operation, the employee was facing early retirement.

Both the employee, who had worked for the company for many years and enjoyed doing so, and the company did not want to accept this and sought a solution. They found it in the form of a special, custom-made pallet inverter that allows the employee to perform the pallet change via forklift without having to dismount. As the employee is considered severely disabled due to his limitations, the Integration Office also covered 50 percent of the acquisition costs for the new device. This means that the costs remained manageable for the company, and the targeted acquisition of an individualized solution prevented the loss of an important, willing employee from the company.

The tide has turned: Companies must take action

Stories like these are becoming increasingly common in our daily work: companies are employing a wide range of measures to attract or retain employees. In the past, when there was more willing labor and fewer regulations, things looked quite different. Of course, safety in logistics and intralogistics has always been at the top of the agenda. However, an effort like the one described above would have been hardly conceivable. Simply because companies did not have to worry about quickly filling vacant positions. They were in the comfortable situation of being able to choose from a large number of applicants. But the tide has turned.

Solutions are available

At the same time, transport volumes have increased significantly and will continue to grow. The good news is that the range of innovative solutions is also becoming larger and more sophisticated. More and more work steps can be performed by machines without compromising quality. On the contrary, machines often perform tasks with even better quality. There are various examples of this, from automatic stretch wrap machines and carton erectors to complex IT solutions that take logistics to a whole new level. Moreover, they help drastically reduce the need for personnel. This not only keeps ongoing operations running but also makes further growth possible. The solutions are there. We just need to use them.

*Sebastian Krayenborg is the Managing Director of Karl H. Bartels GmbH.