Marty with Warehouse and Operations as a Career here, lets see, what do we have for this week. I wanted to talk about putaway today. The putaway positions came up the last couple of shows, and we\u2019ve learned how close the task is linked to the receiving functions and runner positions but we haven\u2019t discussed it\u2019s function just yet so todays the day!
\nOk, a little about the putaway task. It\u2019s a forklift position, and usually we\u2019re going to have a bit of experience on the lift as it\u2019ll be a productivity position. Now in a very small warehouse, and we could be responsible for putting product away, but we\u2019re probably going to hold the position of forklift driver. Putaway, when referred to as a position, our sole duty will be to store and rack product. Typically, there\u2019s going to be 3 or more forklifts running at a time for the position to be called anything other than forklift. I\u2019m talking about dedicated forklift drivers doing nothing other than hauling product from the dock, unless our facility is utilizing pallet runners, or picking up pallets from the aisle and placing them in the pick slots or up in the reserve slots. We\u2019ve looked into the day in the life of a few positions over the last few weeks so let\u2019s stick to the format today as we discuss the Putaway position.
\nWe\u2019ll arrive for work a few minutes early of course, remember we don\u2019t want to be late or tardy, plus we want to sit down for a minute. Relax, maybe have a coffee or soda, and visit with our team mates. We\u2019ll want to do any catching up now rather than waste our productivity time in the aisles talking instead of working and hauling! In my experience we\u2019ll go ahead and punch in and head on back to the equipment area, unplug our lift, do our pre-trip equipment condition report and drop it off in the maintenance department or where ever we\u2019ve been instructed to do so. I always kept a copy of mine, at least the ones where I had marked a dent or paint missing, something the previous shift should have mentioned on their post shift report but maybe just had forgotten about. Now I never was one of those that wiped down the plexi windshield, or my control handle or steering wheel. I pretty much just checked it out, got on it and was ready to go to work. Oh, I\u2019d check it for little paint touch up\u2019s, I mean I always wanted it to look nice but I didn\u2019t keep it as clean as I should have maybe. I had the one gentleman working for me for years, he had a bottle of Windex and a can of Lysol that he kept in his locker. He literally wiped his lift down every day, he even had purchased a little bottle of touch up paint from the manufacturer, both red and black to cover up even the tiniest scratches. I have to admit, his lift looked better than any of the others. He had the best productivity of all of us too, don\u2019t know if there was any correlation but I\u2019ll admit him and his lift usually out performed me and mine. Anyway, now we\u2019ll head on over to the start up meeting. I think its even more important for us as lift drivers to stretch out our muscles, get that blood moving around at the beginning of the shift. My first putaway assignment was on a Hyster counterbalance, a sit down lift. I always made it a point to get off of the lift like once an hour just to stand up and move around a little. Sitting and driving and racking pallets for 10 hours is a little rough on your body, you get to feeling it after about an hour or so. When I switched to the standup reach lift, I found just the opposite, now I wanted to sit down sometime. So, since our goal\u2019s here at WAOC is to get noticed let\u2019s have something to contribute at every meeting, at least make a comment or bring up something about safety. It might be the last time we\u2019ll be seeing our supervisor all shift, if we\u2019re doing our jobs right that is. So, now we\u2019re ready to start our shift, we\u2019ll head to the dock or our aisles, which ever process our facility has lined out for us.