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> And I tend to imagine (perhaps uninformed) that these systems don't catch any small details. The systems basically direct user work, so you have a pretty goo
by Closi 5y ago
> And I tend to imagine (perhaps uninformed) that these systems don't catch any small details.
The systems basically direct user work, so you have a pretty good level of detail, particularly as users will also often scan to tell the system when they are doing other stuff for instance breaks:
* Go to location X (User scans barcode)
* Take 2 of item and confirm (User scans barcode on each of the two items)
* Now go to location Y (User scans barcode)
* Take 1 of item and confirm (User presses not-found)
* Now go to location Z (User scans lunch break barcode)
* Please scan lunch break finished when complete (User scans lunch break complete)
* Now go to location Z (User scans location)
* Take 1 of item and confirm (and so on)
Each prompt and response is recorded as a transaction in the WMS, and then the total time estimate is calculated afterwards based on those transactions.
> That is, very few people are noticeably better than the median worker. But many people just don't work at all
Absenteeism is a huge problem - you are absolutely right! Yeah, it can be easy to hide in a giant DC. Regardless of how good of a manager you are and how much you walk around, if an associate decided to spend their full shift hidden behind some pallets reading a book, it would be really hard to notice their absence without seeing that they picked nothing on the system (particularly when you have a team of 30!).
- spywaregorilla 5y agoHuh. That's a lot more low level than I would have imagined. So now I'm curious, what does the distribution of outcomes look like? How much better is the best worker? Do you feel confident that the tasks are accurately and fairly scoped?
- Closi 5y agoDistribution of outcome is probably somewhat skewed by performance management, but I would say the worst performers would be c30% less than the measured standard and the best performers c30% above. Good note on the scoping of the tasks - it depends totally on the implementation! Ours was pretty good, but the difficulty was keeping it up to date as you have to change the walk routes and distances any time you move physical equipment on site, or change site rules/physical processes.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoThat's interesting. How consistent are people's placements within that ~60% range? Do you vary comp by much on that spectrum? How often do you aggregate measurements of performance to assess people? I've never gotten to work with an activity level system, just overall daily or larger outcomes.
- Closi 5y agoIt’s been a while since I have been a department manager, but the calculation was live and performance stats would be reviewed daily, although formal performance management would only happen after someone has had consistently low performance below target across a number of weeks. A lot of the conversations were bonus related too - “Hey, FYI you are scraping the bonus threshold so if you really smash it across the next 3 days you can pocket an extra $200 or so”.