Cliff Holste, Materials Handling Editor
His name is perhaps not well known by many logistics and distribution professionals today, but Gene Gagnon was an important figure in the history of distribution management.
An industrial engineer, Gagnon, along with his contemporary Eric Baum, introduced the concept of engineered labor standards to distribution in the 1960s. His company (Gagnon & Associates, later sold to RedPrairie) subsequently developed one of if not the first Labor Management System, software which combined labor standards calculation with individual labor performance reporting. LMS systems are of course commonly used in distribution today.
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“Hidden lost time accounts for about 80% of lost time, yet attracts only about 20% of management’s problem solving attention,” Gagnon wrote.
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Gagnon passed away in 2005 at the age of 76.
In 1988, Gagnon authored the book Supervising on the Line, which offered commonsense tips for managing employees in distribution environments – most of which are just as valid today at they were when the book was written.
Too often, Gagnon notes, supervisors in a DC are promoted to that job from being a floor operator – then given very little training about how to do the new job well.
“The new first line supervisor needs and deserves help the minute he gets on the job,” Gagnon wrote, noting that the front line supervisor is the one directly responsible for managing a very important asset – the company’s labor force. Indeed, the ability of the supervisor to drive higher or lower levels of productivity in the DC in the end has a big impact on a company’s bottom line in many cases.
Role of Supervisor Still Changing
In 1998, Gagnon observed that “a supervisor needs to be less of a traditional boss – one who looks over an employee’s shoulder, and fights to get the work done – and more of a coach.” That’s something a much large number of companies recognize today.
Gagnon also continuously emphasized that the role of supervisor was in part “to remove the barriers that prevent employees from doing their best.” He was always optimistic that workers really did want to work hard (and smart) for the company – if the right environment was created for them to do so.
“It’s up to you to convince your workers that you care about them and the quality of their work, and that the company does too,” Gagnon wrote. Just listening to their concerns and ideas is the critical first step, he noted: “Nothing destroys an employee’s motivation faster than feeling no one cares about how he does his job,” he added.
A first step for a new supervisor is to clearly understand what management expects from him or her; conversely, it is essential that management make that clear to front line supervisors, and that the larger “game plan” is also communicated. Often, he wrote, supervisors don’t have this understanding, and are reluctant to ask for such clarification.
Related to those concepts then is making sure a supervisor also understands his or her boundaries – just how much responsibility and authority really comes with the job. Is this really well defined for your DC supervisors even today?
Gagnon likened the proper role of DC supervision to something like preventative maintenance: removing the source of potential problems before they grow into productivity-killing major issues. But a big part of that in turn relates to effective time management, and how many companies even today really provide training and guidance on that skill for supervisors?
(Distribution Article - Continued Below)
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