Building a WMS: The role of change management in system automation.
Upon being told the news that we would be building our own Warehouse Management System, two distinct thoughts within the whirlwind of thoughts I had in my mind. “This is amazing, this is big!” then “Wait, this is so big! How are we going to do it?”. A quote from this blog by Sphere WMS (link) properly captures my heart in this moment, “Remember, it’s one thing to build an application; it’s quite another to build an application, implement it and maintain it for users across your company.” I won’t get into the journey in this article but my dear friend Benson Mungai did a great job of sharing the story through a well penned piece of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) process. You can find it here, make sure you give it a read to get a picture of how it looked like. At this point, we’re going to discuss a bit on change management within this context.
A brief introduction to WMS for those who may still be learning to dabble in ‘Supply Chain’ Lingo here and there: A Warehouse management System (WMS) is a software application that helps manage and execute the operations of a Warehouse, Distribution Centre or Fulfilment Centre. Some mentionable capabilities offered are receiving, put-away, inventory management, stock count, order picking etc.. Upon the onset of the project, the company’s Data Management System did not have the crucial features to support the running of the new and improved Distribution center, envisioned to be a fully automated facility. With the scenario as presented, there was definitely a huge needs gap.
A key aspect that we were looking at as the project team was the successful transition from having a manually supported warehousing process to a near 100% automation of the relevant processes. That, in and of itself proved to be a challenge (if not the biggest) to seeing this product successfully launched and most importantly, adopted. Automation of warehouse processes does come with its fair share of advantages such as an increased level of efficiency of Supply Chain processes however, one cannot rule out human factors and its consideration for a successful transition.
Change management is a systematic approach to dealing with the transition or transformation of an organization’s goals, processes or technologies. It’s purpose is to control the lifecycle of all changes, enabling beneficial changes to be made with minimum disruption to IT services. For the WMS project, we did not have a dedicated Change Manager however, it was imperative for the Product Team to consider components of change management and include them through the product development process. There are several components of change management however, I will narrow in on 5 that were highly beneficial in facilitating the journey to automation through a product lens:
Readiness Assessment
Readiness assessments captures the scope and readiness of the organization impacted by the change. The WMS was envisioned as a transversal tool that improved the efficiency of various sub-processes under the warehouse function. We had to take time & sit down with the relevant warehouse stakeholders to understand their processes (then), culture within the context of their different operational roles i.e what mechanisms support their day to day work and their perspective on the introduction of a new process to support them. Keeping in mind business requirements, we were able to position strategically as Product to create an environment of anticipation of the new system through inclusion of the various user groups in the design process. This created a sense of ownership in the new process & challenged the perception that the new system would make work harder instead of easier. It also enabled the business to anticipate points of resistance & create a plan of action to make the transition successful.
Coaching & manager training
Managers play a key role in managing change owing to the fact that they have the most influence on employee change compared to anyone else. Managers & supervisors played a key role in mapping out and understanding core processes which was crucial in creating a shared point of view & creating a ‘parter relationship’ since their input was esteemed as subject matter experts. While interacting with our various design outputs, they were able to gain a prior deeper understanding which helped to champion new processes & systems to their respective teams. Since we were in an agile environment, this took the form of weekly design walkthroughs on-site, marrying viewing the physical warehouse infrastructure with the designed process & interfaces of the system that will support it.
Training & employee development
It is important to ensure that impacted people receive the training they need to have the awareness of the need of change and also support the change. Within the Twiga ecosystem, the Product Engagement Team oversees the Launch phase, post-launch monitoring & facilitate any relevant product training. Training programs for WMS considered user role as well as function under the warehouse umbrella. They introduced actors known as ‘Champions’ to help communicate various Tech initiatives to Twiga field staff. This select group of individuals support the Tech team on the ground in creating an understanding of launched products and rallying their colleagues to support the change. The launch phase was utilized by the team to equip & engage WMS users.
Data Collection, feedback analysis & corrective action
Employee involvement is a necessary and integral part of managing change. Feedback from employees as a change is being implemented is a key element of the change management process. As mentioned before, being in an agile environment meant that we were consistently planning, executing & evaluating. During the Testing & feedback phase into launching, the Project Team was able to structure itself in a manner whereby there was consistent on-site user support and real-time feature improvement & deployment. Having all these wheels turning at the same time, it was imperative that this moved as a well-oiled machine. The team collaborated with the relevant stakeholders who would serve as central information points for any feedback concerning their function or specific use-case, the Product-Team would collect this feedback and identify probable solutions where necessary & Engineering Team would implement & Deploy, giving guidance on how best to do so without disrupting day to day warehouse processes that were dependent on the new system.
Celebrating and recognising success
Celebrating success within a project not only increases morale for the team but builds support among those who might need ‘just a little more proof’ before they’re fully on board. Over a period of time post-launch, we had daily debrief sessions where we tackled issues experienced but we also identified what was working well. As the sessions progressed, recurring issues reduced & there were increased reports of what was working well. Visibly, this had an effect on the general uptake of the new system and improved stakeholder- Project team relationship as well as the relationship of Product & Engineering as the project team.
In conclusion, from the lens of a product practitioner, the value & input of Change Management cannot be ignored in the Product Development process. While we can strive to include components of it as we go through the the different stages of the process, it would make a much greater impact to consider it during the formative stages and plan for it’s contribution throughout the lifecycle. This would position the product for sustainable impact through and after the transition.
References:
6 Components of Change Management to set you up for success.
Change Management
NB: This article was written while still an employee at Twiga Foods Ltd and has been reviewed and approved for confidentiality by Twiga Tech.
