Place An Order AND It Ships
I worked for a leader that would hold up his phone and say operations is easy - you place an order and it ships. The "and" part - the equivalent of the dash between when you are born and when you die. It's the middle that really counts.
People outside of Operations often think fulfilling orders is easy. Pick, pack, ship - how difficult can it be? What they fail to recognize is that the complexity rises with each additional requirement that is needed.
"We just need a warehouse." Okay cool. Four walls, some dock doors, maybe toss in a few racks, and a forklift. Location shouldn't matter right? It does - inland freight, small parcel shipping costs, time in transit are just a little important. And then we just need to optimize for speed, accuracy, cost-per-pick, and labor efficiency. Now stand that warehouse up in a highly regulated state where high pile permits are required, warehouse floor boring for weight capacity is needed, regulations for hours worked, insurance risk, etc all apply and the complexity increases. Suddenly just needing a warehouse has become needing it in the right place, with the right amount of storage space, the right number of docks, the right flow, and at the right cost per square foot.
Add the requirement that it store products from highly regulated industries and you have increased the complexity exponentially. The way that you store, the exposure to temperature conditions, the potential introduction of contaminants all make it that much harder.
Let's increase the complexity - now the requirement is a warehouse for cold chain. Suddenly everything changes. Product integrity becomes consideration number one. Every minute outside the right temperature band is a risk. You don’t just measure order cycle time - you measure exposure. People behave differently in a freezer - PPE, limited dwell time, constant rotation, slower movement - and now labor planning becomes a science experiment. Equipment takes a beating. Conveyors, scanners, forklifts - cold temperatures test the limits of everything. Preventive maintenance isn’t optional - it’s survival.
Packaging is its own operation. Water content of corrugate, insulated liners, and dry ice become experiments of their own. Package configuration and optimization is a requirement.
Shipping is a high-stakes handoff. Carrier delays that are annoying in ambient can be catastrophic in cold chain. You need buffers, redundancy, and constant monitoring. Weather forecasting and civil unrest bring a level of complexity that raises the bar even further as delays in transit result in spoilage.
If you’ve worked in both worlds, you know: Ambient operations can be tough. Regulated industries can be more difficult. Cold chain is expert mode. You also know that the "and" is so much more.
