IRIA

THE OWNER OF the country’s biggest pallet-manufacturing business last night expressed confidence that the firm would be able to continue to meet its orders after a fire damaged its warehouse operations.

Seán Lehane, managing director of Mid-Cork Pallets which employs 80 people, said the company had been fortunate its manufacturing plant had not been damaged when fire broke out at its operation at Clondrohid near Macroom, Co Cork. He said there will be no lay-offs at the plant.

“We were very lucky – no one was injured and the fire was contained in the warehousing area and the machines were undamaged, so we’ll be able to continue production to meet our orders,” said Mr Lehane.

The blaze broke out at the warehouse section at about 7.40am yesterday and five units of the fire service from Cork and Kerry spent several hours bringing the blaze under control.

Firefighters from Macroom were joined by units from Millstreet, Bandon, Ballincollig and Killarney, while a unit from Bantry was prevented from getting to the scene by icy roads.

“There were flames shooting up when I got down here but there wasn’t time to get emotional about it, there was just too much to get done,” said Mr Lehane, who set up the business in 1977.

He confirmed that stock and packaging had been damaged but it was too early to put a figure on the amount of damage caused. The company’s suppliers and its competitors had been hugely supportive, offering to assist in whatever way they could, while Lucey Transport Logistics in Millstreet had offered warehousing, he said.

“Sawmills have been offering to help as have some of our competitors and the local community here in Clondrohid were great as well, bringing us sandwiches and tea – people have been amazing.”

As the largest pallet manufacturer in the country, Mid-Cork Pallets produces about two million pallets a year and also has an operation in Dunboyne, Co Meath, which will help meet its orders.

Meanwhile, gardaí under Supt Liam Horgan of Macroom Garda Station have begun an investigation into the cause of the blaze and officers were last night studying CCTV footage from the plant.

Garda technical experts will today begin an examination of the scene, but Supt Horgan said there was nothing at this stage to suggest the fire was started maliciously.

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A forklift driver who died from a head injury after colliding with stacked pallets, was a victim of a “lapse in strict workplace procedure”, according to a coroner’s report.

The report has revealed Peter Delamare, 63, died as a result of “accidentally sustaining blunt force head injury from a workplace accident”.

The Masterton man worked at Juken New Zealand at the Wairarapa Mill when the accident happened.

On August 24, 2009 he had started a nightshift about 8pm and was removing bins of waste timber by forklift from the laminating plant to a waste pile, by travelling on a roadway lined with stacked pallets.

Although yellow lines were painted on the sides of the roadway to designate where pallets should be stacked, at times pallets and waste bins were placed outside of these lines, said the report.

While returning with an empty waste bin, the forklift collided with stacked pallets and Mr Delamere became injured and disorientated.

No one saw the accident, but shortly afterwards he was seen by a colleague stumbling around and then falling to the ground, said the report.

Mr Delamere was taken to Masterton Hospital and later transferred to Wellington Hospital. He did not recover and died less than two weeks later on September 3.

Coroner Ian Smith said it was a “tragic accident” that had caused the company to review its safety procedures.

Investigations in the accident were carried out by the police, Department of Labour, and Mr Delamare’s employer.

Department health and safety inspector Russell Young initially recommended a prosecution against Mr Delamare’s employer because it “failed to take all practical steps to ensure the safety of Mr Delamare”.

Following a further review this plan was dropped.

Instead, Junken and the Department of Labour agreed to use the incident to highlight the threat posed by workplace hazards, circulating a safety alert, and taking part in a national forklift driver competition.

Mr Young said injuries like Mr Delamare’s were rare and did not warrant mandatory use of helmets for all forklift drivers.

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MORE people are being hurt in manufacturing and construction than in any other industries, according to injury claim data for registered workplaces in the Whitehorse area.WorkSafe data shows 639 workers in the Whitehorse manufacturing industry made claims, costing more than $14 million over a five-year period to June 30 this year. In the construction industry, 460 workers claimed more than $10 million in the same period.

The data has been released following the launch of WorkSafe’s Homecomings campaign, to remind workers how workplace injury can affect family and friends.

In the past four weeks there have been eight workplace deaths in Victoria.

WorkSafe spokeswoman Rosanna Bonaccurso said manufacturing and construction were high-risk industries statewide.

In 2011 there were 24 deaths in the workplace. “In the lead up to Christmas when workers are busy in the rush to meet deadlines sometimes safety can be compromised,” she said. “Sadly, 24 people did not get the opportunity to go home, having died on the job in tragic circumstances,” she said.

In the Manningham area, construction topped the list for work related injuries, with 266 people making claims costing more than $7 million over the five-year period.

The injury claims include people who are off work for 10 days or more, as well as those with treatment costs exceeding $580.

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When we have natural disasters such as the floods in Thailand that have been the worst in 69 years, the key to turning crisis into opportunity is the effectiveness of a company’s logistics and supply chain management.
We saw examples of this in the retail sector, as big chains such as Big C, Tesco Lotus and 7-Eleven ran out of essential stock after the floods in Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani inundated factories and warehouses. This led to loss of stock, then panic buying, and for a few days many shelves lay empty.
The retailers have largely recovered since then, with most items back in stock after they quickly opened up new supply chains, including imports of water, noodles, canned fish, eggs and UHT milk from Malaysia. They also set up new warehouses and distribution centres that helped them to restock their shelves.

For manufacturers, unfortunately, it was not so easy to mend their broken supply chains. Many of the flooded factories were producers of electronic, automobile, computer and optics parts that were essential to the global supply chain. Manufacturers around the world were therefore forced to cut production, as were factories in unaffected parts of Thailand such as Rayong.

This disruption of supplies has led to much discussion about the current trend for supply chains to be both thin (with only small stockpiles) and global _ which means they are always vulnerable to natural disasters somewhere, such as occurred in Thailand and Japan this year.

Despite the disruption to supply chains and the losses suffered as a consequence, I see no likelihood of this model changing, as this is an efficient way to organise business. Manufacturers today don’t like to hold large supplies of stock because the rapid pace of technological change means that parts will quickly become outdated. They also like to take advantage of the specialised, skillful and relatively cheap labour force in places such as Thailand, where they can also be close to major markets.

Major manufacturers have already given assurances that they don’t wish to leave Thailand. As the automobile industry expert Michael Dunne explained to the Wall Street Journal, companies will want to stay in Thailand because of the “world-class work” that Thailand produces.

“The (Thai) workforce is skilled and still relatively cheap and it has close proximity to a Southeast Asian market hungry for cars,” he said.
There is no question, then, that Thai industry will survive. But what does it need to do to thrive _ and be prepared for similar disasters in the future?

One lesson is the importance of not just having a business continuity plan but also conducting regular risk assessments that cover all possible scenarios _ from market risk to operational risk to economic risk. Producers should also consider how they can limit their exposure to a single geographic location. Additionally, the coming rebuilding effort will present an opportunity to review manufacturing processes, so as to maximise flexibility, speed of adaptation and resilience in the future.

Most of the damaged suppliers are specialised and highly skilled medium-sized businesses that have become an indispensable part of the global economy. This means the large international companies that rely on them will give them the support they need to recover quickly.

This disaster has demonstrated how successful Thailand producers have been in filling key global supply chain niches so I am confident that they will have the skill and imagination to turn this crisis into an opportunity.

Virasak Sutanthavibul is an Executive Vice-President with Bangkok Bank. Meeting the Challenges appears every two weeks. Questions, comments or suggestions can be sent to asiafocus@bangkokpost.co.th. For more in this series please visit www.bangkokbank.com

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Competition Increasing, with Record 13 Vendors Included in the Analysis; Do We Need More Network Connectivity for Carriers Across All Modes
Almost everyone in the supply chain community is familiar with the Gartner Magic Quadrants (MQ), short hand for the detailed vendor analyses that the analysts there do regularly across virtually every area of technology, including supply chain.
A few months ago, Gartner released its 2011 Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems (TMS), an effort led by Gartner analyst Dwight Klappich, a research exercise that take several months of intense effort to complete.
These reports are called Magic Quadrants because in the end they wind up positioning vendors in a given technology area in a 2 x 2 matrix, with one dimension being “ability to execute,” and the other being “completeness of vision,” with each dimension in effect being divided into high/low categories. This results in four areas or quadrants into which a given vendor can be placed (Vision Hi or Low, Execution Hi or Low).
SCDigest editor Dan Gilmore recently had the chance to discuss the 2011 TMS MQ with Gartner’s Klappich, which we transcribe below.
Gilmore: Having wrapped up this latest TMS MQ, what are some of the key takeaways from this year’s report?
Klappich: We looked this year at about 13 TMS vendors, the most ever, and it’s clear the TMS market right now is very strong in terms of corporate adoption. After a slight dip in 2009, down about 3%, we saw a rebound in 2010 and beyond, and we expect growth rates of about 10% for the next five years.

A very important finding this year is that while very large shippers, typically those with a $100 million or more in annual fright spend, were the bulk of the TMS market throughout its history, we now see much more adoption by small and medium size shippers, companies spending as little as $10-25 million on freight annually.
There are a couple of reasons for this. First, new delivery models such as software-as-as-service or cloud are making these kinds of TMS applications a lot more affordable.

SCDigest Says:
The second takeaway is just more competition among TMS providers. We’re up to 13 vendors covered in the Magic Quadrant, and that gives companies just a lot more options.
The breadth of today’s TMS applications is changing. In the past large shippers have really focused on the optimization aspects of TMS given the number of shipments they had to optimize across.

But with the on-going expansion of TMS scope, smaller shippers can benefit from using a system that starts at transportation sourcing and goes through planning and execution and freight audit and pay. That allows them to get benefits in multiple areas that provides a broader foundation for ROI and ways to pay for the system.

The second takeaway is just more competition among TMS providers. We’re up to 13 vendors covered in the Magic Quadrant, and that gives companies just a lot more options. Even though this is a mature market, that by no means indicates that innovation has stopped in the space. We continue to see TMS vendors adding new capabilities.
Gilmore: Sounds like there is a lot of new TMS action in tier 2 and 3 shippers – are you seeing much replacement action among larger shippers?
Klappich: Not much among the companies that have implemented TMS recently. The vast majority of TMS customers we are talking to are net new implementations, companies that never had a real TMS solution or maybe had just a point system in one area. This is really their first go-round in terms of a more holistic TMS.
Gilmore: In terms of new TMS capabilities recently, are there any things that stand out? Where are TMS providers investing in terms of functionality?
Klappich: One of the main areas is in terms of transportation sourcing capabilities, because that’s where you lock in your costs. It’s great to have strong optimization capabilities to consolidate loads and pick the least cost carrier, but a lot of total cost is locked in at the front end.
(Transportation Management Article Continued Below) TMS vendors are adding a richer, more flexible sourcing capabilities to support the annual bid process, to make it easier to do if nothing else but also adding logic to the bid process to drive better results. ‘Second, we’ve called this “multi-modal” TMS for several years, but the reality is that it was really focused on trucking – full truckload and less-than-truckload. Now, a lot of the new TMS focus has been on expanding the modal support, such as adding fleet capabilities for companies that have
private or dedicated fleets. Parcel is being more strongly supported too, as a lot of companies that were bricks and mortar are now using parcel and therefore are looking for multi-carrier parcel capabilities.
Improved international and intermodal capabilities – this is also key area of focus, in part because even smaller shippers are looking for this now.
So as I said, even though the TMS category is mature, the vendors continue to add pretty notable capabilities.
Gilmore: What else should be know?
Klappich: An issue that became more clear this year is that we see a growing battle looming between embedded networks and independent networks. By this we mean the trading partner network that is needed to support the end-to-end transportation process. TMS by definition is a multi-enterprise process that involves at least a shipper and carrier and can include other parties like suppliers forwarders, 3PL or customers. Today there is no ubiquitous network that covers all carriers, across all modes, that TMS users can plug into, and this remains one of the more time consuming and difficult implementation steps if all the trading partners need to be connected as part of the project.
For well over a decade people have been talking about creation of a ubiquitous freight network, analogous to what exists in the travel industry where hotels, airlines and rental car companies can be accessed simultaneously to book travel reservations, but this has yet to materialize.
We now see two competing paths emerging what we call embedded network or independent networks. Today if a shipper buys a TMS they can either buy a system where the vendor has no prebuilt connections but has tools to help customers connect to its carrier partners or it can look at a SaaS TMS that has some carriers already connected on its SaaS platform. While the latter sounds the most appealing – and indeed if the shippers carrier are already connected there are advantages – but today no vendor SaaS or on-premise has a complete network across modes. The largest pure SaaS TMS has about 10,000 carriers on its network but the vast majority of these are over the road carriers and it offers limited or no support for other modes.
The other trend we see emerging are vendors in partnership with large TMS and software vendors, notably Oracle and SAP, starting to build independent carrier capabilities that could eventually be connected to any TMS.
This is nascent, but being supported by the large vendors who have established customers that could help drive and accelerate adoption and network growth. In the
SaaS scenario today you have pretty strong networks, in at least one mode, but often not industry leading functionality.
In the other you have industry leading functionality but weak networks or the customer has to build their own network. Customers are left with having to compromise on one or the other. Because of this we believe the two models will continue to evolve in parallel but longer term we believe that users would favor the independent network approach, assuming that multiple networks emerge, so that they could pick the best TMS and the best network.
What’s your reaction to Klappich’s comments on the TMS market today? Do you agree we need a more universal connectivity model for carriers across all modes? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback area below.

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While many businesses, not only within the logistics industry but across the board, will be focusing on driving business growth or maintaining stability as the UK’s economy is still on the road to recovery, staff development and investing in training is an important factor in keeping staff on top of their game and morale high. Matthew Marriott, Hellmann UK’s Commercial Director, discusses the ins and outs of ‘people development’ and how this can not only keep staff happy but customers too.
• Good customer service is a paramount skill set that should be practiced by all businesses and ‘best in class’ customer care should always be at the forefront
• By keeping staff motivation levels high and investing in personnel, customers benefit with exceptional customer service and quality relationships
• Through continuous investment and development, whether through in-house training schemes or business life in general, the knowledge we all hold helps contribute to our success
• Giving staff the necessary skills can only help to improve productivity and equip them with the knowledge to handle everyday challenges within the business
www.logisticshandling.com

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Workshop to help employers understand early return-to-work benefits
A free workshop to help employers understand the benefits of an early and sustainable return to work for injured workers is being held next Tuesday, at Dandenong, by WorkSafe Victoria.
The workshop would help employers understand that working with the injured person and those treating them had benefits for all, said Return to Work program manager Danielle Jacobs.
“While most people get back to work relatively quickly after an injury, many others would benefit from better support from their employer. Apart from the treatment and rehabilitation costs paid for by the employer, rearranging work, possibly recruiting replacement employees and time lost managing claims is a business cost that can be cut.”

“Maintaining contact between the workplace and the injured person is good for their emotional health and wellbeing while there are also clear commercial benefits for the business,” Jacobs said.
“The international evidence showed getting people back to work was generally good for them as it helped offset the risks that came from loss of contact with workmates and friends.

Alternate duties can often be found even though the person may not have recovered to the point that they could return to their old job.”

At this event, industry experts will provide practical tips and information about: employer return-to-work obligations; the role of the specialist Return to Work inspectorate and what they look for when they visit a workplace where a workers’ compensation claim has been made; what to do if you receive an improvement notice and how to manage difficult and/or complex cases; how return to work affects the estimated future cost of claims and how claims costs are used to determine the relative performance of a business and setting premium; how to measure the impact of improved return to work on business bottom line.

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Is this Good or Bad? Supply Chain Segmentation Strategies Key to Making it Work?

Supply Chain News

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Improvement Projects That Are Sponsored From The Top Down Have The Best Chance Of Being Adopted
It’s interesting to note that in companies with a history of maintaining the state-of-the-art relative to the application of logistics technologies, improvement projects typically originate with professionals who have that responsibility. It has been my experience that a company’s senior level managers play a key role in the development and justification of logistics projects. This is especially true for the larger and more technically suffocated projects.
A company’s attitude towards logistic operations starts with senior management challenging operating managers and line supervisors to find creative solutions to production and distribution issues. They want projects that will provide an ROI in areas such as:
• Improved productivity in warehousing and distribution operations
• More efficient utilization of facility space, energy, and human resources
• Reduction of reserve and WIP inventory
• Increased order fulfillment speed and accuracy

Holste Says:
It is important to understand that while a company’s business model may be unique, the system concepts and equipment technologies that will be most beneficial for their operation is not unique.
• Higher throughput without incremental increases in labor
• Greater system flexibility and agility
• Reduction in overtime hours
• Reduction in errors, damage, shrinkage, and back charges.
However, projects that will accomplish the above will not be adopted unless management actively promotes an environment that encourages associates to come forward with creative cost effective improvement projects.
This point cannot be emphasized too strongly. Because, too often astute individuals who are eager to start projects involving the application of advanced concepts, new methods or technologies are discouraged by middle managers who tell them that “the timing is bad” or its “too risky – the front office won’t buy it”.

To correct this impression, senior management must spell out long-range objectives in terms that mean something to operation managers, engineers and planners. A senior manager who has never received even a preliminary proposal involving creative approaches to improving logistics issues should look for answers to the following introspective type questions:

• Is the company’s production expertise in balance with its warehousing and distribution capabilities?
• Has the company’s approach to logistics remained static?
• Is there any indication that warehousing and distribution managers automatically turn-off discussion of improvement projects involving application of advanced technologies?
• Is the company’s IT department adequately staffed to handle improvement projects?

Final Thoughts

Fortunately, the track record of material handling system successes has been very good over the last decade or so, which has gone a long way towards overcoming the FUD factor – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. It is important to understand that while a company’s business model may be unique, the system concepts and equipment technologies that will be most beneficial for their operation is not unique. In fact, it is most likely already providing cost and operational benefits to their competitors every day.

Cliff Holste is Supply Chain Digest’s Material Handling Editor. With more than 30 years experience in designing and implementing material handling and order picking systems in distribution, Holste has worked with dozens of large and smaller companies to improve distribution performance.
By Cliff Holste
November 16, 2011
www.scdigest.com

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Cycle through the 12 Steps for Effective Leadership, each time with greater nuance, on a higher level.

You’ve likely heard about 12-step programs to combat a range of addictive behaviors. These interventions have helped millions, including several people I know whose lives have turned around with their support. Similarly, there are many in leadership positions who appear mired in repetitive and self-destructive actions; perhaps they might benefit from such support. These dysfunctional leaders seem sucked into the lure of “The Dirty Dozen,” 12 patterns that significantly limit or even sabotage their efforts:
1. Ambiguity: Not communicating clear expectations of who, what, where, when, why.
2. Insincere delegation: As in, “I’ll pretend you can decide as long as you read my mind and do it my way.”
3. Micromanaging: “I’m closely watching — and maybe overriding — anything you do.”
4. Unevenness: Demeanor seems arbitrary, so others can’t tell whether they’ve done something wrong (even when the leader’s just having a bad day and taking it out on the world).
5. Motivational emptiness: Not regularly delivering tangible feedback that helps others stay on track and improve.
6. Tyrannosaurical: Seeking to stomp out the most from others long-term by roaring out stress and fear. Doesn’t adapt to changing environments.
7. Blame shifting: Championing honesty and responsibility — for everyone but themselves. All problems are always someone’s/everyone else’s failing.
8. Not squared away: Planned changes fizzle due to not getting needed permissions, nor arranging for critical details in advance.
9. Overly mechanical: Assuming people are — or at least “should be” — orderly machines and behave as such.
10. Too cloudy: Only looking far ahead while never getting anything useful done now.
11. Me-ness: Unbalanced emphasis on covering their rear or playing politics, rather than building positive actions. Taking as much credit for everything, everywhere from everyone with a main thrust on shining bright.
12. “It’s Good To Be King”: Leadership means only one person — the leader — is the moving force; others’ roles are compliant followers at best. Underestimating the power and import of actively engaging everyone.

On the other side, with due respect, here are 12 Steps for Effective Leadership to help elevate leaders’ effectiveness. Higher-level leadership can, in turn, ripple out to others becoming safer, healthier, and more effective and productive.
1. Develop. Start with yourself; effective leaders set the tone by leading from the front. Before you expect others to change, ask where and how you can improve, then continue to work towards on these. Only second, look to develop others as leaders, rather than compliant followers. Some will rebel against being treated as highly programmed robots; even others who try to do as they’re told will often forget or get complacent. And even willing followers are unlikely to seek or try out potentially creative solutions absent from their pre-written script.
2. Vision. Best leaders employ many kinds of vision. Look around (horizontal vision) as well as to the past and future (vertical vision.) Looking back can help you glean patterns of action and culture for assessment; looking around helps illuminate blockages to objectives, what competitors are doing, current opportunities.
3. Culture your culture. Providing the right nourishment is critical to achieving desired changes in culture, and small-yet-significant shifts can definitely occur in even relatively brief time spans. When biologists culture an organism, they provide the conditions (nutrition, warmth, space) necessary for that colony to grow. Remove or limit needed nourishment, and the new-grown culture will atrophy.
4. Expect people to continue to take steps towards improved safety actions. But don’t expect them to drop everything, be totally different, or ignore their current obligations. For example, cumulative trauma injuries take time to develop — and time to reduce. Don’t squash budding successes by impatiently acting on too-short demands for major turnarounds or return on investment.
5. Communicate without protracted delay. Alert others about small shifts in direction as well as timelines, progress towards objectives, their and your parts, reasons for changes. Even if this isn’t your personal style (“I keep my lips sealed until everything is worked out in advance”), understand that others’ needs and fears are what are most important to them.
6. Energize everyone. Draw them together toward desired objectives. Show them how it’s in their personal interest to make positive action improvements. Focus on benefits
they can reap by applying the rights tools and techniques to their favorite off-work hobbies and activities.
7. Involve. Involvement is both an indicator of company improvement and a tool for accomplishing better and lasting performance. Look to question more, “tell” less. Find ways to invite everyone to become a part of a change effort, no matter how small. Inclusion leads to buy-in.
8. Customize. When bringing aboard any new system, procedures, training, or other interventions, be sure to adapt these to your culture. To propel change that’s less likely resisted, start from where you currently are, rather than trying to leap too far ahead to where you wish you’d end up.
9. Bridge. Build bridges across organizational chasms of positions, departments, site cultures (different shifts, multiple locations), and diverse employee groups.
10. Make it easy for others to lead. Reduce obstacles to others’ actually accomplishing visible changes — and provide “keep going” feedback when others lead effectively.
11. Nurture. Initial changes have to be supported. Just as shielding a seedling makes it more likely to take, protect changes in actions from the pests of doubt and negativity and the droughts of disregard or distracting demands. One way to do this is to have a senior manager be the visible spearhead/lead on any controversial initiative.
12. Consider. Make time for reflection, to sculpt plans with your mind. Don’t get so totally submerged into the daily grind you develop repetitive mental trauma.
Remember, this these 12 steps are not a one-and-done. You don’t go through them only once. Life, change, improvement, leadership — none of them is linear. Cycle through these steps, each time with greater nuance, on a higher level. Best leaders sidestep traps — often of their own making — to create firm footings for action change.

This article originally appeared in the November 2011 issue of Occupational Health & Safety. www.ohsonline.com
About the Author
Robert Pater is Managing Director, Strategic Safety Associates and MoveSMART®. To contact him, visit www.movesmart.com.

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