If your business is in warehousing or logistics in Southern California, you know labor is a huge issue. Rising wage costs combined with shrinking unemployment rates means that available workers are scarce.
The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. warehouses and distribution centres will need an additional 452,000 workers from 2018 through 2019, adding to the existing 1.3 million industry laborers across the country. That means in Southern California, which has more than 100,000 logistics workers, projected demand for additional laborers could number in the thousands.
And, because of the continually increasing labor demand in California, state unemployment rates have steadily decreased year over year. As a result, there are fewer people looking for temporary work, further adding to the labor shortage.
Competition for labor means increasing wages for warehousing employees. In addition, this year California raised its minimum wage from $11 to $12. The bottom line: costs are rising for warehousing and logistics service providers in the state.
As a logistics and warehousing service provider, you may be feeling the crunch in both time and money. Rising labor costs combined with low unemployment rates means that workers will be harder to hire, and that you’ll be spending more to hire them. One way to help alleviate the issue is to more effectively leverage your existing operations and resources. How can you save time and money by getting the most out of your workforce?
Digitizing your operations can improve cost efficiency by:
- Reducing manual production processes through automation, improving employee efficiency and satisfaction
- Tracking production performance to reward and retain staff on high-performing lines
- Auto-generating production schedules and quickly iterating to optimize for the most efficient use of resources
- Tracking real-time labor, downtime, and units produced for production performance visibility
- Leveraging historical production performance reporting to identify high versus underperforming lines and make continuous improvements
Nulogy enables the digital transformation of contract packaging and manufacturing organizations, helping to orchestrate late-stage customization processes with ease, speed, and flexibility.
See how Staffing Synergies, a Michigan-based contract packager digitized its operations to reduce errors and processing times. Download this PDF to learn how they did it, and how you can do the same.
