Episode 77 – Warehouse Engineers

In this episode, I was joined by Brandon Ashby who is the founder of Warehouse Engineers. I met Brandon at MODEX and he came by the booth to hang out for a bit and we also ended up having a discussion for the podcast. We talk about his background, how Warehouse Engineers was founded, and also about the importance of standard work.

Key Takeaways

• Warehouse Engineers is an industrial engineer for hire that focuses on building a repeatable process that leverages your people and technology to its full extent. Brandon brings his corporate experience from working to bring standardization to multiple warehouses and also his education based in industrial engineering and lean-to help improve your operation overall. He is incredibly enthusiastic about continuous improvement, lean, and 5S.
• Brandon utilizes a lot of the principles of lean to implement the standardization of processes and to ensure that processes do actually exist within your operation. He discusses his background and how he began to learn about lean and then how he was able to start implementing it at a company he previously worked for which led to him eventually founding Warehouse Engineers to help other companies begin their lean journey and improve their processes.
• One of the biggest parts of lean and the 5S concepts is the standardization of processes and procedures. Brandon and I discuss just what this means and the importance of it. We both share the same ideal that standardization is such a key building block to optimizing your operation. There are many instances where processes are unknown by everyone within an operation and even worse there are instances where only one person knows a process or as Brandon says in the episode one person knows everything. This can be troublesome because when the individuals who know the process are absent then the process might not get done or even worse get done incorrectly. Having standard work ensures that the process is followed the same way every time and there is no chance for mistakes to happen.

Listen and watch the interview with Brandon below. Let us know in the comments about how you create your standard work.