Objectives
C.H. Robinson, an industry leader in Retail Consolidation headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, proactively sought to address rising labor costs in their warehouse operations. The company’s Warehouse Excellence team aimed to improve real-time workforce performance reporting, establish formalized coaching capabilities, and support continuous improvement initiatives through business intelligence data. To achieve these goals, C.H. Robinson determined that implementing a Labor Management System would provide the necessary management tools, real-time visibility, and data analytics to optimize their operations.
Solutions
C.H. Robinson partnered with TZA to implement the ProTrack Labor Management System, which offered the real-time visibility, performance management tools, formalized coaching platform, and business intelligence reporting they required. TZA’s 40 years of labor consulting and engineering experience were leveraged to conduct Lean analysis, refine Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), develop precise engineered labor standards, and facilitate leadership training. The implementation included a well-defined change management plan involving all levels of the organization. The entire project, encompassing program design, ProTrack integration and configuration, SOP and performance metrics engineering, program training, and go-live support, was completed in four months.
Results
Within three months of implementation, C.H. Robinson’s operations team effectively utilized the ProTrack labor management system to increase performance by almost 10%. The emphasis on performance coaching, nonperformance-based employee engagements, and effective use of ProTrack operational data led to the identification of multiple continuous improvement projects. These initiatives are expected to reduce operational costs further while improving service levels. The higher engagement and focus on using real-time operational data to remove productivity barriers positively impacted culture and retention. C.H. Robinson’s pilot site is on track to reduce annual labor spend by approximately $450,000 and achieve a seven-month return on investment. Based on this success, the company is rolling out its Warehouse Excellence Program to all sites, with ProTrack as the cornerstone of its inspiring high-performance culture.
“I’ve been a part of many LMS implementation projects, and this was the smoothest, by far.” Nick Corbolotti, Distribution Manager, C.H. ROBINSON.
