In our Distribution and Logistics Sector Trends Report 2024, more than one quarter of leaders (26 per cent) told us that their supply chain management function needs better technology to enable greater effectiveness. In manufacturing, 58 per cent said boosting efficiency and increasing productivity was their key priority for the coming year, with 65 per cent citing plans to upgrade their digital systems. Businesses are turning to technology as the silver bullet to unlock much sought-after supply chain efficiency.
However, whilst attention-grabbing AI and robotics dominate the headlines, digital transformation can only go so far without first considering the basics. Leaders must analyse their people resource and where it is being used inefficiently; for example, making workers complete menial, painstaking tasks, incorrectly utilising their skills. Before reaching for the newest technology and techniques for production lines and transportation, consider how digitalisation can increase efficiency when it comes to your people power.
Get rid of grunt work
Menial tasks can dominate employee time, especially when it comes to frontline managers. Much of a plant floor or fleet manager’s day will be dedicated to cascading information from the leadership team, conveying policy and process, and conducting basic organisational duties, like generating the roster or processing leave requests. As a result, they operate as a conduit rather than an innovator, and have less time for implementing improvements, training, using their judgement and coaching their reports. Repetitive, administrative tasks are an inefficient use of working hours, as intelligent, skilled individuals are completing jobs that require no brain power and prevent them from taking on more complex, value-adding tasks.
Invest in software as a service to outsource menial duties and eliminate time spent on HR necessities. Time and Attendance software allows employees to easily access their schedule and take control of their own shifts and overtime. This avoids workers wasting part of their day trying to find and change information in an inefficient system – with 44% of the UK workforce believing time spent making basic HR queries is holding them back from reaching their full potential. For managers, self-service Time and Attendance software saves them from the administrative task of conveying scheduling information to their reports. It also allows them to create rostering templates that can quickly be applied to recurring shift patterns, massively reducing time spent devising the schedules themselves. At the click of a button, auto rostering with Time and Attendance will suggest the optimally staffed working schedules based on the availability of all employees.
Automated time capture also means employees no longer have to manually log their working hours using paper-based processes, and managers are saved from painstaking duties checking and inputting these sheets into a separate system to feed into payroll. Instead, with Time and Attendance, access control devices, which employees use to clock into work, can be used to create an automated digital record of working hours with no employee input needed at all. Timesheets can be downloaded from the software and signed off, then fed into Payroll for increased accuracy.
Improve performance
When frontline managers can spend more time on active, improvement-based tasks, rather than menial work, the results speak for themselves. For one US equipment manufacturing firm, when administrative tasks were reduced and energy was redirected into providing on-floor coaching and problem solving, production rose by 40 per cent. Job satisfaction is also likely to improve, further boosting performance and staff retention. 85 per cent of employees would prefer to work for a company that optimises processes and reduces manual administrative tasks. As the supply chain skills crisis bites, eliminate inefficiency to keep your staff engaged, satisfied and more likely to stay.
Time and Attendance software will also eliminate the lost productivity that results from people cheating the system. Buddy clocking is the phenomenon of one employee asking another to clock in for them, meaning false payroll hours are counted. It is also easy to falsify physical time sheets, committing ‘time theft’. An access control mechanism can be utilised to avoid this, by ensuring staff check in using fingerprint or facial recognition with biometric technology.
Inefficiency is often understood as lost time and resources relating to the main business function of your firm. Wasted materials, indirect transportation routes, over delivering, and excess packaging are all common culprits. However, distribution, logistics and manufacturing leaders should also consider inefficiencies in the people processes that whirr behind the scenes. Technology has its place here too, to streamline systems and ensure that each worker’s time is deployed in the most useful way possible.