Unlocking Warehouse Innovation with Jamaal Franklin of ID Logistics

Adam [00:00:00]: Thanks for joining us Jamaal. Could you help us understand your role at ID Logistics, a little bit about who you are, your role, and what you're focused on today?

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Jamaal: My name's Jamaal Franklin. I work with ID Logistics. I've been working with them for the past 10 years. I am the Operations Manager. I oversee the operations of the building and make sure everything runs smoothly. I'm also part of the team of innovations. We've got a few things including OneTrack. We have other things too, but this is one of our bright spots in our newest stuff we've added to our building. A lot of our other sites are looking to also add OneTrack to their facility as well. So it's been great.

 

Adam: Awesome. So I can imagine there's probably been a lot of change in the industry over that time. What's been the biggest change you've seen in the industry let's say in the past five years or so that's made your life more challenging?

 

Jamaal [00:01:00]: Well obviously with COVID, that changed a lot of stuff. So just on the standpoint of that alone, retaining good people and holding people accountable, which OneTrack helps with. So we can keep the good people who want to stay here and work. It's beneficial. We've got better numbers with OneTrack and better visibility overall of what we want from our associates and what the customer wants as well. In terms of changes, it seems like there's a lot less work but not really. It's just a different take on how the business was run prior to COVID. I don't want to relive that again. I remember one day we had about 25 people call off and don't want to go back to those days. But with OneTrack and dealing with things and seeing things that our system doesn't see and captures, it's been super beneficial. That's why a lot of our other facilities are looking into also jumping on board with OneTrack.

 

Adam: What's one myth or one commonly held belief that you often hear about warehouse operations that you disagree with?

 

Jamaal [00:02:00]: The misconception: productivity is always number one. Getting stuff out the door, getting stuff in the door is always going to be number one priority and it's not. It's always going to be safety number one. I believe every facility should be like that because one thing we preach to our team is the way they come in is how we want them to go home. And like I said, with OneTrack and seeing stuff that people think they were getting away with before and not now, it's a clear sign that we're going in the right direction and making this place safer.

 

Evan: You just mentioned about seeing things that people used to get away with. So how do you think more visibility in general helps you as an operations leader?

 

Jamaal [00:03:00]: I don't want people to get hurt. Prior to OneTrack, we had a lot of findings of hitting stuff. Like obviously nothing was capturing it. With OneTrack we are seeing that now, who's doing it and nobody's pretty much hitting anything anymore. Also, with the cell phones being on the dock is one of our biggest pet peeves just because we have had some incidents in other facilities where people have lost their lives over a cell phone because they got a message. So stuff like that is exactly what I'm talking about because I don't want to go to anybody's family saying this person has passed away because of a message on their cell phone. Capturing that within those first couple of months of having OneTrack, we caught a lot of things right away which helped get rid of some people. I hate to say it that way, but it is what it is. Some of those were veterans. So they should know better and we hold them to the utmost standards. We want the best people here, people who want to work and want to do their due diligence to make sure not only themselves are safe but their coworkers as well.

 

Evan: Yeah, we hear that a lot. I was talking to another ops manager, another customer of ours, and they mentioned that if everyone followed the standard operating procedures and processes, the building would basically run itself. It's when people don't follow those processes that everything goes wrong. With cell phone usage or not reporting incidents, things can really go bad very quickly. I think most associates do their job well, want to perform safely, want to be productive, and want high quality. It's the few that think they can skirt the rules that the visibility and accountability really helps.

 

Jamaal [00:04:00]: Correct. You could take one or two people and they could give the whole operation a bad name and that's something we don't want, so I absolutely agree.

 

Evan: So speaking of that, you've brought up safety culture being number one for you. What are some specific things that either you found with OneTrack or programs you put in place aside from OneTrack that have helped increase that accountability and helped you coach people? What are some of those behaviors that you're seeing?

 

Jamaal [00:05:00]: On a safety front, how people are driving because some people are going at very aggressive speeds, especially going around corners, stopping at stop signs. We have that everywhere all over the warehouse, especially in between racks. You never know. One thing we always teach them is just because you don't hear a forklift doesn't mean somebody's not walking on foot. Obviously, you're not going to hear them beep. So you know to keep your head on the swivel. You always got to be aware of your surroundings. I like to always use the analogy of a lot of my guys are playing Call of Duty and one of the biggest things about video games is situational awareness, right? You gotta know where you're at, what's around you, understand your environment and what can cause any kind of harmful physical injury or even damage to product. I always say just because we're in a warehouse doesn't mean you shouldn't drive like you're not on the road outside the warehouse. Same rules in terms of under the influence, being tired, any little thing that can possibly make you not operate at 100%.

 

Evan: Have you found anything where without really seeing and knowing what's going on, an operator would have been terminated but because you saw what was happening you were able to have a conversation, coach that operator, maybe get a different viewpoint on something and that operator wasn't actually terminated but a different corrective action course was taken?

 

Jamaal [00:06:00]: Yeah. We have a lot of people that come from different buildings and one of our policies is especially with sit-down operators we always tell them to drive backwards. Just because you never know with the forks extended out, you've got to come out a lot farther out of the aisle to have visibility of who's walking or who's coming. So we have them going backwards. But we had an incident when a person didn't. They were pushing between 2 and 6 pallets going forward. They were completely blind. And obviously I know some warehouses allow that but not us. For that reason, that person ended up hitting the pole which obviously damaged products and damaged the forklift. It was a lesson why we have this in place. You can't see in front of you if you have something blocking your view. That was a learning opportunity for a lot of people who haven't experienced that before.

 

Evan: Yeah absolutely. So shifting gears a little bit, the stories from or the claims from damages and shipments and delivery locations either saying that they got damaged product or maybe they were supposed to get 20 pallets and they only got 19. So could you tell us a little bit about maybe one of those specific instances where maybe the individual location said that they didn't get all the product that they got but you were able to actually show them that you did? What was the outcome of that?

 

Jamaal [00:07:00]: I'm glad you brought that up. This was one of our international loads that went out to India and they said that they didn't receive X amount of cases or pallets of a certain item going off their pictures. I'm very good at investigating. It doesn't take me long to realize things because I know how my team works. I know how we build pallets. When they said this and they showed the picture from their site in India saying they didn't receive this pallet, I showed them on the paperwork that this is how the pallet should have been. Nothing was cut. Nothing was left off. Everything shipped correctly. I also proved with OneTrack as a visual with our front-facing cameras on the loading trucks that these pallets were on there. Once we lock up the trailer, it's out of our hands. Between where it shipped out of here and where it went to India, something obviously got missed. But we did prove with OneTrack's help that we shipped out everything correctly. That's a great example. Thanks to OneTrack, without that I would have been having a claim of reimbursement.

 

Evan: And is that something that used to happen frequently, whether it was just this specific location or in general? Is that something that you dealt with a lot?

 

Jamaal [00:08:00]: A lot. Yeah, it's a lot. A lot of times I could usually kind of prove it but especially with international loads, we take pictures anyway but not for every single pallet. It's just making my job easier and explaining and showing people that we did our part. That's been a blessing.

 

Evan: So recently we've stepped into the productivity and AI labor management side of things with ID Logistics. How has that been going? Anything that's helped with productivity in the building with this new functionality?

 

Jamaal [00:09:00]: Yeah, in the past few weeks we've noticed that we couldn't capture idle time before. We noticed that a lot of people were wasting time. They would do their numbers but were sitting around talking to people for a half hour. Now we're catching that. We see the idle time. We added productivity where we went from X amount of cases or pallets per hour to rate per hour now. Before we were all negative. A lot of my workers were negative in their productivity but now with the switch to rates per hour, everybody's positive. That's been helping a lot especially with trying to work and present to my company an incentive program for people who are over 100% to get extra money and not rely on overtime to get extra money. I told my IT this is something we can use as a tool to make sure my guys get a couple of extra dollars in their paycheck.

 

Evan: Yeah. I think that's a really important aspect of any tool that can give you more visibility into operations. It shouldn't just be like a gotcha tool. It should be something that you can have positive reinforcement and accountability. If people are performing well, you want to give them kudos for it. Before, you would just have to look into a spreadsheet or maybe a labor management system and see that static number. Now you can get a little more context into what's actually happening and either correct something or give people props when props are due.

 

Jamaal [00:10:00]: Yeah, absolutely agree. Doing that before took up a lot of our time, took up a lot of my time. With OneTrack there's a lot of time back to me, a lot less investigation and trying to figure out certain things like idle time and who's doing what. We just have a better insight on what everybody's doing exactly. It doesn't need to be negative. Sometimes it's just positive. We also found a way to catch cheaters, people who cheat in the system. We don't want that with the program of incentivizing to get these guys more money. We want people to do it correctly and not take shortcuts. That's one of our biggest things too, not to take a shortcut because shortcuts could lead to other bad things. Just because you did one wrong move. A great example, we had to take the call with the company and unfortunately one of our guys in a different building ended up hitting somebody because he was trying to be fast. They don't have OneTrack. It wasn't caught on camera but it was visually seen that he ended up hitting somebody. Just because it's a faster way of doing it doesn't mean it's a safe way to do it. OneTrack helps us see those people who are taking shortcuts and doing other things they shouldn't be doing.

 

Evan: So when it comes to culture in the building, you talked about it where the people who want to be there and want to be good workers are the ones there now. How do you think that's evolved over time? You've been working with OneTrack for about a year now. I think you've done a lot of great work both prior to OneTrack and now since OneTrack's come into the building. What are some of those key things that you're doing to help improve that culture, improve that safety focus, and keep people accountable to processes?

 

Jamaal [00:11:00]: It's more of just coaching them, understanding not only is this going to make you a better associate and a better worker but it's going to also make you more safe. Especially with the self-coaching we have now, that's helped them know where they're at. There are a couple of things behind the scenes we're going to be adding pretty soon. That's something the associates will love because one of the things they asked me the other day is if there's a way for OneTrack to tell us where we're at. That's something that they are looking forward to so they don't have to run to their supervisor to figure out what numbers they're at or wait for somebody to print out a copy of what they're doing for the day. They love that part.

 

Evan: Last time we spoke, you said the fleet utilization and equipment usage reports were some of your favorites. Have you found any instances where you've been able to allocate resources more effectively or differently based on what those utilization reports were telling you?

 

Jamaal [00:12:00]: Absolutely. Certain equipment not being used, even though they're in the house, that's a wasted opportunity to do more jobs. That gave me the opportunity to have more overtime for people for other shifts to come in and help out, especially with our busy season right now. We're in snack season so we get pretty busy around summertime. Everybody wants their potato chips for their barbecues and everything. It allows me to get back with the customer and raise our capacity to what they're looking for. So we can meet their requirements to get everything out the door.

 

Evan: That's great. It's something I hear from a lot of buildings is that the utilization aspect is so huge because you can either right size your fleet or like you mentioned adjust resources and bring in other people who want and need that overtime to get the most out of the building especially around busy seasons.

 

Jamaal [00:13:00]: It also lets me see that my guys are picking way above what we have in place. I'm in the middle of maybe adjusting those numbers higher because they're doing so well that I can go back to the customer and say now we were doing this before and I could do an extra 10,000 pieces a day.

 

Evan: It's a pretty good problem to have.

 

Jamaal: Yeah.

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Adam: On a less serious topic from safety and productivity. Jamaal, I heard you're a big movie buff and you've been known to review movies which is super cool. Love that. Huge movie guy myself. Wondering which actor would you cast to play yourself in a movie about your life?

 

Jamaal [00:14:00]: Uh honestly, man, unfortunately he passed away and that's Chadwick Boseman. He was a great actor. It's funny because I just had my nephew watch the last Black Panther movie which obviously he wasn't in but I teared up again just watching that movie. Just knowing what he did without anybody knowing this whole time, you watch all these movies he had the cancer. Yeah, it would have been him.

 

Adam: I know that was incredible the way he kept that to himself and just kept on and that was really inspiring.

 

Jamaal: Super humble, super humble.

 

Evan: In that same vein, if you had to pick a movie title to describe your job as operations manager, what would that be?

 

Jamaal: Oh man, that's a hard one. It's hard because some days you have great days and some days you have terrible days but you overcome it. Right. So I would say "Never Give Up". That would be the title.

 

Evan: There it is. Perfect.