How does one define quality in the context of a warehouse? The perfect warehouse is clean, has everything in its place, and is easy to access. Your warehouse looks like the one below, right?

You have a perfectly accurate database table that tells you exactly where everything is, correct?  And your fast-moving products are easily accessible right near the loading dock! And all your warehouse employees have perfect attendance and never make mistakes.

Figure 1: Your warehouse. Right?

Right!

As they say, “You get what you measure.” So if you want a perfect warehouse, you should measure the “quality” of your warehouse against the perfect ideal. For example, if you want your warehouse floor to be clean, define a quality metric to track of the number of pieces of trash left on the floor, and publish the metric for all employees to see.

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