Commonwealth Supply Chain Advisors recently published a ground-breaking white-paper titled, “Beating Murphy’s Law in Warehouse Automation Projects.” The full paper examines a number of the reasons why automation projects fail to meet expectations, and what companies can do to beat Murphy’s Law. This blog is fourteenth in an ongoing series on “Beating Murphy’s Law in Warehouse Automation Projects.”
When it comes to operator training, there’s no such thing as too much. It can be inconvenient and costly to take operators away from their duties to train them on new processes, but it is important to remember that training will happen – it will either be in a controlled fashion, ahead of the deployment, or chaotically in the heat of the go-live.
Project leaders and engineers may find it easy to underestimate the degree to which new processes and technology must be clearly laid out to the those who must actually use them. The key project stakeholders may have been living and breathing these changes for over a year prior to deployment, as new processes are designed, built, and tested. Many times, however, the system operators themselves are only exposed to the new processes in the immediate lead-up to the implementation. It may take them longer than expected to embrace the new ways of working, and they may not readily admit when they do not understand aspects of the new workflows. Murphy’s Curve cannot be eliminated, but relentlessly training, testing, and re-training can make it as shallow and short as possible.
To read Commonwealth’s complete white-paper titled, Beating Murphy’s Law in Warehouse Automation Projects, click here.