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A LEARNING DESIRE
John R. Johnson

The role of education within the warehouse — be it for entry-level workers or senior executives — has risen dramatically in an effort to increase efficiencies and retain employees.

It's been almost 10 years since Jamaal Rashad gave up on the teaching profession. However, he hasn't strayed too far from his educational background. As warehouse operations manager for Robert Bosch Corp.'s Atlanta distribution center, Rashad makes it a point to emphasize training and education on a regular basis.

Rashad, a former special needs teacher, is currently chairman of the education committee for the Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC) and has witnessed the benefits of training warehouse personnel first hand.

Bosch ships a diverse range of products (approximately 30,000 SKUs) from its 265,000-square-foot warehouse, and often relies on a high amount of temporary workers for various warehouse operations. Unlike some outfits, which treat temp workers as nothing more than a temporary labor fix, Bosch offers them a chance to learn and move up through the ranks.

In fact, of the 40 warehouse associates employed directly under Rashad, almost all of them started out as temporary workers. Three of the four management positions within the warehouse have been filled by temp workers who climbed the corporate ladder, and all but two of the DC's 14 assistant managers were temps. Many of them have taken advantage of the educational opportunities provided by Bosch.

"Who really goes to college to be a warehouse worker?" asks Rashad, who, after deciding he needed a career change, began his new profession at Bosch by temping in the warehouse. "The workers we get are usually people who are out of a job or unskilled labor. Somehow, we need to gear our education to those people. We like to hire from within. Our warehouse is very automated. We use a lot of computers and RF equipment, and we tell them if they stay here for a reasonable period of time that we can get them trained on computers so that if they move on from here, they have more marketable skills.

"The fact that they know how to drive a forklift or use RF equipment gives them an edge. We can at least get them that qualification so that when they leave here they have skills to take with them. We have training classes for them and we train them across all areas to give them those skills."

Bosch sponsors a college degree program and pays for all courses that are relevant to an employee's job in the warehouse. "I encourage them to do that," says Rashad. The firm also recommends that managers in the warehouse take at least three seminars each year. That program will be extended to hourly employees next year.
"I select two of the courses, based on their job requirements, and they select the third course based on their own personal development," says Rashad. "We also try to cross-train them in different functions across the warehouse so they aren't only picking, but they are getting experience in other areas as well."

Indeed, there seems to be a new emphasis on education as warehouses not only battle with an ongoing labor crunch, but realize their growing importance as a prominent part of the supply chain. Tom Speh, director of the Warehousing Research Center at Miami (Ohio) University, says that he has had more requests recently to speak about general supply chain issues. He also notes that education regarding technology is growing in importance.

"Recently I've had more requests from people wanting me to come and talk with warehouse managers about their place in the supply chain, and how what they are doing relates to the overall big picture," says Speh. "It's a focus on expanding the horizons of the people in the facility and getting them to see where they fit in the scheme of things in the supply chain."

That falls right in line with what Richard Lancioni, Ph.D., has observed over the last few years. A professor of logistics at Temple University, Lancioni notes that the emphasis on training and education in the warehouse sector is growing. "I think it began with the development of organizations like CLM and WERC back in the 1970s," he says.

"Unfortunately, the warehousing part of logistics has clearly been an operations area, so the feeling always was that it didn't need to be professionalized, especially because it could be outsourced. But in the future, we'll see more of an emphasis on professionalism. Some companies are also looking into supply chain management within their company and are saying 'let's give our warehouse people a chance to move up into supply chain management.' "

Lancioni also notes that because the distribution center is the heartbeat of operations at most firms, many companies now require new employees to spend time in the warehouse before moving on to their new job. This is true for positions in sales, marketing, customer service, manufacturing and even purchasing.

Going back to school
Aside from Bosch, one company putting a full focus on education is The Olson Company. A third-party-logistics provider based in Waukesha, WI, the firm was recently named Business of the Year as part of the annual Waukesha County Executive Awards. The panelists on the award committee noted the firm's Olson University, a program for continuing education for employees.

Olson University was designed to offer Olson's supervisory staff the ability to further develop personal skills that are not only applicable at the workplace, but in their personal lives as well. The course ran twice a month after work for 26 weeks, and Olson paid employees overtime for two of the four hours each month. The Olson Company had 25 management personnel eligible, and all but three participated.

"The whole idea was to provide an educational experience that helps people understand how to communicate with one another and how to understand others in a business relationship, whether it's with a forklift driver or another supervisor," says Steven Jacobus, president of The Olson Company. "People at the supervisory level really embraced it. Just the fact that the company cared enough to provide this opportunity meant a lot to them."

Jacobus estimates that Olson University, held for the first time last year, cost the company about $20,000 to put on. While hard payback costs are difficult to come by, Jacobus notes that "the economic impact has been pretty significant." He points to Olson's recent acquisition of a small trucking company that was recommended by a member of Olson's management team. Although Jacobus was away on business when the opportunity arose, the management team negotiated the deal themselves and closed the deal in seven days.

"I never told them if I thought we should buy the company or not," says Jacobus. "I just guided them. They closed the deal in seven days and it was remarkable how fast it got done. It happened because the group looked at it as a team effort.

"That kind of organic management structure happened partly because they sat in a classroom and did these team management classes. Had we not gone through that course work, it would have been more of a challenge to pull it off and get them to think as a unit. Financially, the acquisition has been a big success for us."

The Olson Company won't run Olson University again this year because most of the management team participated a year ago. However, with growth of between 30 and 50 percent expected in 2002, there should be enough new managers to run the program again in a year or so. However, Olson still offers a variety of educational options for its employees. Last year the company sponsored a two-week computer class for all employees, and Olson is running the same program this year — and allowing employees to bring a family member at no cost. Olson also has its sights on bringing its educational efforts online.

"We'll probably be going to an Internet-based education system in the near future and we're trying to pave the way for all our employees to participate in that," says Jacobus. "We're in five states and the challenge we have is what can we do for our employees (outside Wisconsin)? We can't reach them with some of this stuff, so we're designing an Internet-based Olson University program that they can do on their own time, and we'll provide employees with the computers to do that."