Setting Standards for Packing

The retrieval, packing and shipping of products from a warehousing organization can be a complex operation with little apparent standardization. To insure cost effective and efficient operations, timely shipping, and customer satisfaction, it is important to set proper standards. Through an orderly process of breaking the jobs down into tasks, tasks into elements, time studying and rating the elements, and applying allowances, a set of standards for packing were established. In general, it was found that the operators were up to 30% underutilized, i.e. there were too many operators. This was primarily due to the skewed distribution of work, with mornings being very quiet and customer orders picking up during the afternoon. The best solution would be to utilize fewer full-time workers and bring in several part-time workers for the rush period.