Author: Carrie Weinberg Sep 29, 2022 2 Min READ

How Continuous Improvement Drives Efficiency in Your Warehouse

2 Min READ
How Continuous Improvement Drives Efficiency in Your Warehouse

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Extensiv’s strong focus on continuous improvement is what drives us to create innovations in the third-party logistics (3PL) industry, all based upon industry best practices and our deep, first-hand expertise in the space. Our goal is to connect the world through intelligent distribution by providing 3PL warehouses with the tools to connect with other facilities, maintain 360-degree visibility into their operations, provide their customers with the best experience possible, and most importantly, drive order fulfillment efficiency.

At Extensiv, we believe that complacency is the enemy of progress. We hear from our customers daily about how much the industry is changing, as well as the challenges and opportunities that arise from this dynamic environment. As we continue to grow and innovate, we want to share the philosophy that pushes us forward and forces us to adopt new practices and build new products that increase warehouse efficiency for our customers and the customers they serve.

What Does Continuous Improvement Mean?

Our strategy of continuous improvement is based on the Kaizen methodology, a Japanese philosophy that promotes striving for continuous improvement in both work and personal life. The idea is that making small changes or improvements over time can have a big impact.

According to the Kaizen Institute, the Kaizen methodology revolves around five key principles:

  1. Know Your Customer
  2. Let it Flow
  3. Go to Gemba
  4. Empower People
  5. Be Transparent

These principles guide our decision making at Extensiv, where we do first-hand industry research to understand the challenges and opportunities impacting our customers and share our insights with them. Let it flow refers to constantly streamlining workflows, reducing clicks, and eliminating waste for ourselves and for our customers.

Go to Gemba means to go to where the work is being done, literally to the “real place.” Extensiv makes it a point to visit our customers’ sites during the implementation process and beyond so that we can see how the product is used and hear real-time feedback. This drives our innovation with first-hand customer data, ensuring that our products are meeting the needs of 3PLs in today’s world.

Empowering people is about building systems and goals for alignment and execution. We closely monitor product usage and product ideas submitted by customers to empower employees with the right data and systems to affect change. We know that people make the difference, including employees and customers.

What’s next?

This year, Extensiv’s philosophy of continuous improvement has driven us to create industry-first offerings like Extensiv Network Manager, Fulfillment Marketplace, and the Outbound Productivity Dashboard. However, we also believe in continuing to invest in our core product, Extensiv 3PL Warehouse Manager. Some ways we hope that our improvements bring you simplified workflows, easier employee training, and more profitable fulfillment include:

  • Multi-user pick: SmartScan now allows you to efficiently pick orders, use multiple workers on the same pick job, easily switch users while a job is in progress, and more.
  • Sandbox 2.0: Enhances the usability of current Sandbox environments by allowing users to simply click a button to copy their live Extensiv 3PL Warehouse Manager data into a Sandbox instance. With Sandbox 2.0, you can optimize your development efforts for lower effort and faster results.
  • Auto-batching orders: Reduce the manual effort required to prepare orders for fulfillment by allowing the warehouse management system (WMS) to create homogenous groups of orders that help organize the work for your warehouse staff, making it easier to fulfill those orders as efficiently as possible.

To learn more about how you can partner with a technology provider that's continuously innovating to meet or exceed market expectations to increase efficiencies in your own warehouse, request a demo of our software and see it in action.

Written By:
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Carrie Weinberg

Carrie has been a product marketer in the B2B SaaS space for 5 years. Having worked in the environmental, data and analytics, and 3PL industries, she is skilled at condensing complex information into relatable language, especially for small- to mid-sized businesses. At 3PL Central, she is responsible for working closely with the product and customer success teams to support product launches, enable sales, and ensure a seamless customer experience. She advocates for clients by applying a pragmatic marketing approach, identifying market problems and helping companies solve them with impactful messaging and valuable content. Carrie has a Bachelor's degree in Marketing, a Certification in Business Analytics, and is currently pursuing her MBA.

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