Tiger Team Ep#2
Summary
Ben and Jordan catch up and discuss the fun and games that happen during facility walkthroughs with senior executives. They share stories about how frantic it is to clean and prep the facility before the walkthrough, how awkward the small talk is in the conference room before the walkthrough, and how slow the pace is during the actual walkthrough. They also share a pro tip for impressing the executives by strategically placing graphs and charts on the daily management board. A warehousing employee complains about the frustrations of having senior leadership walk around the warehouse and offer unhelpful suggestions. They also share their annoyance with HR telling them they need to document more, and the lack of understanding from support teams. The employee and their manager joke about common jargon used in the warehouse, such as "removing barriers" and "cross training." The manager also explains the dreaded "deep dive" and "Tiger team" terms. The hosts introduce themselves and their show about warehousing and banter. They discuss a new project called the Tiger team. They talk about their personal experiences in warehousing and share different perspectives. Ben shares some insights on optimization and AI in warehousing. They acknowledge the hard work of people in the industry and thank listeners for tuning in. The episode ends with a farewell and call to spread the word about the show.
Transcription
Speaker 2
[00.00.09]
Hello Tiger team followers. Welcome to episode two, where we promised nothing but warehousing bullshit and banter. My co-host Ben let me open the show, so I promise it's already off the rails. Before I formally introduce him, I want to remind you that you can find the Tiger Team podcast on Spotify and the Warehouse Underground website. Of course. Ben, what have you been up to since episode one? Wait. Well, that thought I never know because you're not posting about or hyping your website at all on LinkedIn. Also. Also second question do you pay your AI generated warehouse people for their photo shoots? And maybe third question, is the tiger a paid actor? Okay. Okay.
Speaker 1
[00.01.02]
Oh, man. Uh, first of all, the tiger has a name. His name is Gemba, and he's a very good boy. Uh, I love I love gemba, and. Yeah, I mean, I have, uh, I have AI actors that are on the show. They they work for free. The cool thing is they do whatever I ask them to do. They get put in any position. It's great. I'm glad that. I'm glad that you've noticed them. Uh, so I'm appreciative of that. But it sounds like I need to. I need to up my game a little bit on LinkedIn and get a bigger reach out there for the warehouse leaders out there, but they're just they're always busy. You know, they're not they're not online. They're not on LinkedIn. They don't always see that. And you know what they're busy with.
Speaker 2
[00.01.48]
Oh gosh, I don't know. Running shit.
Speaker 1
[00.01.51]
No no, no.
Speaker 2
[00.01.52]
Um, meeting the customer. Promise?
Speaker 1
[00.01.55]
Also, no.
Speaker 2
[00.01.57]
Um, receiving and shipping?
Speaker 1
[00.01.59]
No, no, on both of those.
Speaker 2
[00.02.01]
Okay, then. Am I missing something here?
Speaker 1
[00.02.05]
Here's what they're doing. They are preparing for and executing site walkthroughs for visiting bigwig senior leaders or executives. That's what they're doing.
Speaker 2
[00.02.15]
Uh oh. The good old dog and pony show. I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked to clean. Literally. Oh, make sure this looked pretty for site senior leaders to walk through, to not even acknowledge me as one of the leaders at the site who's actually running their operations.
Speaker 1
[00.02.40]
Like, here's the thing. I know that I am not alone in my disdain for this. And so, I mean, I'm about to go off. I'm about to go off on a rant. I'm gonna go off about to go off on a huge rant about this. I mean, you may just want to, like, mute your microphone because
Speaker 2
[00.02.58]
no, no, no no, I, I can't do that. Um, it's in my Tucker team contract. I sign that I can't be muted. Fair enough. So here's the thing, guys. Like if you're out there listening the the preparation for the facility walkthrough usually happens like a week in advance. And it's ridiculous. You got all the
Speaker 1
[00.03.22]
say what
Speaker 2
[00.03.23]
you got a week maybe like a few days or. Yes. But it's always the same thing, right? It's just like a mad dash tape over here. Clean up this area over here. Spiff up your daily management board as if you've been using it every day. Make it look pretty. It's the whole thing, right? It's like cleaning up your house before you have company when you're a kid. And here, here's a side story though. I was doing this one time Jordan. And so the whole facility gets it's clean, gets ready, everything is buttoned up. Right? Right. And then at the last moment, we stumble upon the maintenance guys area. And it was like a complete.
Speaker 1
[00.04.10]
Yeah, it was like a complete bomb. It went off back there. And so we meet and we're like, okay, guys, uh, emergency plan here when we are steering the executive around the building. Like, do not walk back here. Do not walk back to where the main area, you know. Yeah. It's like maintenance guys out there. They don't they're not under the same standard that I don't think when it comes to cleanliness. And by this. So uh, interesting side. So anyway, anyway, back to the back to the executive showing up. Okay. So you do that, you throw it all together and one day you're prepared and then it's like the arrival and you never know. So usually some executives are different. Like there's the and I've seen this there's the like sneak in through the back door guy that like yeah you like come in and sneak in through the back door and sort of see if the associates question him or allow him to walk in there, and then they'll come and follow up either, hey, do you know that your employees just let me walk right through the facility? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like the little the the sneaky one. But then but then there's the other one where they come with, uh, an entourage and you're supposed to. You know what I mean? You're supposed to receive them in the front and bring them in and give them this, like, all almost a red carpet type thing. And so then
Speaker 2
[00.05.38]
none of them have vests and none of them have. Yeah. Used to walk through the facility and they look like they don't belong.
Speaker 1
[00.05.46]
So you you receive them all in, okay. And then everybody comes in, and you, you usually meet in the front conference room, and it's just very awkward. No one is really comfortable in there. Nobody really wants them to be there, but they have to play nice. And so you're in the conference room, there's small talk, and then there's that moment when the executives are getting ready or executive is getting ready to go out on the walk, and he has to put a vest on. And you and you know that this is the type of person that is not wearing a safety vest hardly ever in their life. You know, I mean, you're probably
Speaker 2
[00.06.30]
wearing a button down shirt for starters.
Speaker 1
[00.06.32]
Yeah. Like they wear Peter Miller pullovers and just the whole thing. And so yeah, they get their vest and then like, sometimes this will happen where they try to put their vest on, but it doesn't like come on. Right. You know. Like. Yeah. Their arm gets stuck in the thing and it is just. But. But they don't want it to be, like, as if they can't hang with the group. So they make like a little funny joke or something about it. So it's just like, this is awkward, but putting on the vest, right? So eventually the vest gets put on and everybody goes out and they start to walk around the facility because that's what you do now. Okay. When I say walk, there are serious quotation marks around walk because walk is like, hey, we're we're walking. We're walking to the store. Like we've got a pace. We're swinging our arms. Oh yeah, we're walking. That's not what happens on these. These are like, you go ten feet every two minutes is the is the pace that that everybody is on. And it never fails. Jordan. You know how you drive down the road sometimes. And there may be a cop that is driving in front of of the traffic. What happens to the rest of the traffic behind the cop?
Speaker 2
[00.08.01]
Oh. Everybody slows down. Yeah.
Speaker 1
[00.08.03]
Yeah. Like no one passes the cop. So the cop was doing, like, five under the speed limit. And here everybody else is behind them. That's what happens on these. So nobody goes on a pace more than what the executive is walking. So they're all hanging out behind and up front with them is usually like the general manager and a senior leader. And the and the GM always has to look on his face with the senior ops leader that says, I will gut you if you say some shit, you know?
Speaker 2
[00.08.36]
Yup, yup. Meanwhile, meanwhile, all the associates are like, why are these random people who we've never seen before just staring at us?
Speaker 1
[00.08.46]
Yeah. Yeah. And then. And then. Oh, by the way, so the associates will scatter, right? So if they see, like, people walking around the facility suits on and they're like, okay, well, why is my, uh, general manager and my senior manager looking and reporting to this person? I need to scurry away. This seems like this seems like high threat. So it's just. It's just no one. There's no one around. So you walk around, you meander around at this insanely slow pace. If you're young, you're like hanging back in the back. Like you're hanging in the back. Back row at school, you know, you don't want to get called on. Yeah. Like they say you're hanging back there and it they just point out awkward stuff okay. And then it never fails. Right. Here's the part that never fails. It never fails. They always end up with the executive walkthrough. They always end up in front of the daily management or the gemba board. I mean, it's like it's like they're being sucked into a black hole, you know? So the executive ends up there and then it will just stare at the at the daily management board as if they're in like an art gallery.
Speaker 2
[00.09.57]
Right? Like they both like they know what they're looking at, but they probably have no clue.
Speaker 1
[00.10.03]
Yeah. Yeah, they, they they have no idea what they're looking at. So listen, listen, if you're listening out there okay here's a pro tip for you. All right. Here's a pro tip. They don't know what they're looking at at the board, but in their job, they are used to looking at spreadsheets and graphs and lines in the whole thing. So just take them to where they already want to go. So put up some type of graph on your on your board that has some obvious outlier to it or some obvious trend, and they will immediately glob on to that. Right. Oh well what what happened here. What what what happened on the on this day. What what is this, uh, defect surge right here and now you're like. Yeah, well, sir, we we did a deep dive analysis on that. Uh, and that led us to the ultimate root cause. And then we were able to build in some countermeasures to attack that. And you can see with the follow on graph that it was under control and very well measured. And we were able to have success through our improved process. Oh, oh. Promote
Speaker 2
[00.11.15]
you just. You. You just broke the code
Speaker 1
[00.11.20]
now, Neal.
Speaker 2
[00.11.22]
Yeah, that is that is. Wow. That that is expert level.
Speaker 1
[00.11.29]
Yeah. So obviously obvious. Sarcastic. But it's just like. Come on. You know what happens at the site? You know, they they frantically threw it together the day before and cleaned it. You know, this whole thing. So don't don't patronize them by coming in. Then they give the report out to the GM. Oh, place looks great. You know, good, good job. And the whole thing. And everybody like everybody knows that this is a big dog and pony show. So just call it. Call it what it is. So, uh, anyway, like, if you're listening out there, if you're a manager out there and you've gone through these walkthroughs before and you have at least a 75% agreement with me that this is true. Like, drop me a note, drop me a comment on the comment section, or email me to let me know that I'm not alone. And if I am alone, you know that's that's okay too. Well,
Speaker 2
[00.12.18]
I can't tell you you're not alone. And what's frustrating is a lot of the feedback ends up being things that, uh, the actual site can't control. So millions of frustrations with those walks. Uh, I if I, if I were them, I would just walk in cold turkey, just say, hey, what's going on? And then just walk during normal operations because they also never come when operations is running either. So no, it's just, uh, it's like I said, a dog and pony show. We're just flexing for no reason.
Speaker 1
[00.12.55]
You know, you you know, you know what you're going to get. So but I do I feel better, I feel better now. I was able to get that off my chest and I'm as guilty. I've. I've, uh, I've been the recipient and I've conducted them, so I've seen.
Speaker 2
[00.13.10]
Well, I don't know if you have any rant left. Uh, but do you know what also annoys many empty managers out there?
Speaker 1
[00.13.22]
Yeah. Uh, HR telling them that they need to document more.
Speaker 2
[00.13.27]
Well, close. But support people and they're quote unquote help to the obscene.
Speaker 1
[00.13.35]
Uh, the. Oh, yeah. Like what? Like if they come out to help pack or or or something like that or help work or are you talking like the, the other. Oh no, no, no. If they come out and help support the operation by being in path, I am all for it. I'm talking about when they're they don't know their role as support. So let me let me give you an example. So at my last site, our maintenance team required us to drop a ticket before they would touch any piece of equipment, even even if the equipment went down. And I called on the radio and I said, hey, this went down, I'm dropping a ticket now. They would literally respond, well, until I have the ticket number, I can't come out there. So at my last site, we had a mezzanine that went down, and when it went down it would all operation.
Speaker 2
[00.14.32]
And it wasn't just the occasional it wasn't just the occasional haul. It was at least once a week. So instead of calling me on the radio, I would literally have to raise the submit a ticket to try to minimize the impact to operation.
Speaker 1
[00.14.52]
So yeah,
Speaker 2
[00.14.53]
they get the ticket, they come out to the floor, and then they don't even have all the right tools. So they're looking at it and they're like, oh, we left this in the cage. We have to walk back. And you know, that's going to be another 10 to 20 minutes downtime depending on how far there are. And so our our site would be down and we wouldn't be able to fix it. So that is what I'm referring to when I say support. Yeah. Yeah. You know. I mean, I think we should do another show, a follow on show with just interaction. First of all, like, I love the maintenance guys out there. This is a hard job and everything, right? If people only care about you when. When things are broken and the whole thing. But I have. I have some funny stories about interaction with them to Jordan, so I think that might be worth the more of the future show, but I'm with you on that. You know, I mean, for the for the support teams out there, I would just say like, look, just communicate and find common ground with the ops team. And you just like, build yourself back yourself into the fabric of ops. And then if you're able to do that, then you a small step that you will be an absolute hero. You know, I mean, you just be an absolute them. And uh, so yeah. But yeah, the ticketing system, uh, I know I'm not alone in my disdain for that, because it's like your ops is moving fast, right? Like, you don't have time. You don't have time for these type of plays. Yeah,
Speaker 1
[00.16.27]
you on that. So, you know, like most of the people that listen to all the listeners, I should say listener of the of the show, uh, are in the, are in the ops world out there. But again, like we are in Spotify and so there is a chance, Jordan, that we could have people that listen to the show that are not in the world of warehousing and
Speaker 2
[00.16.52]
bless their heart.
Speaker 1
[00.16.54]
Yeah. So on the small, very small, I mean very small offhand that someone is listening to the show that's not in warehousing. I think maybe we should go through some common jargon that you hear out there in the world of fulfillment centers and kind of explain to them what that what that means, what I mean, what do you think about that?
Speaker 2
[00.17.17]
Well, then, you know, if we do this, we're risking that our one listener will turn off the station, right?
Speaker 1
[00.17.27]
Yeah. You know, I mean, it's like people don't want to listen to the show because they're like, I live that show. I live the show every day. So I get it. But, uh, we're here for you, man. We're we're we're your voice. Uh, come use this. But I'm going to go. I'm going to jump in it anyway. Okay. So I'm I'm I'm going to give you four. You tell me what they what they really mean, and then we'll sound good.
Speaker 2
[00.17.52]
I like it.
Speaker 1
[00.17.53]
Okay. What does remove their barriers mean?
Speaker 2
[00.18.00]
Remove their barriers means that the information that we provided about the assigned task doesn't click the first ten times. So we have to spend another five, ten, 20 hours more trying to get them to understand the assigned.
Speaker 1
[00.18.19]
Pool. What is a bridge?
Speaker 2
[00.18.25]
Uh, that's an explanation for why operations that day.
Speaker 1
[00.18.30]
Explanation? Or is an excuse is an excuse or is it an explanation?
Speaker 2
[00.18.34]
Look, there a very plausible reason why we thought they might be an excuse. Might be real.
Speaker 1
[00.18.43]
I mean, what are the chances? What are the what? What happens if you just regurgitate the same bridge over and over? Does it get through? Do they get red or what? Oh,
Speaker 2
[00.18.55]
they won't notice for at least a week or two. And and also, I find it ridiculous when if it's the same problem, we have to have a different action every day. Even though we can't just let the one action try to work first.
Speaker 1
[00.19.13]
Yeah, I'm with you on that. I may or may not have kept handy a list of 20 common bridges and just cut and paste them.
Speaker 2
[00.19.23]
Oh. Who doesn't?
Speaker 1
[00.19.25]
Yeah. You're not cheating. You're not trying. Right?
Speaker 2
[00.19.30]
Okay. Absolutely.
Speaker 1
[00.19.32]
Next one. So explain to me as a as a manager in a FC delivery or where what happens in your soul when an associate comes up to you and says, hey, the sorter is down.
Speaker 2
[00.19.51]
First, I don't want to believe them because I'm like, is it really down? Like, are you really telling me this right now? Uh, and then when it's confirmed, uh, my soul will get sucked into hell, uh, along with the rest of the ship, because you're just fighting from behind at that point. Uh, cold sweats included. Lots of sweat in general from running up and down the stairs. Um, trying to determine what is the problem when you literally have no idea what you're looking at. You
Speaker 1
[00.20.19]
know, what's funny about the sorta thing is. So if you're not familiar, most people are familiar. But a sorter is a is a big giant machine, like a big giant conveyor belt machine that ticks all the boxes and sorts them out according to which shipment door they're supposed to go into. Whatever the, the, uh, the different truck carrier is. Uh, so they're huge, they're huge and fast. And so the little side story here, I remember one time, uh, the the leadership of my side is like, hey, we need to come up with a backup plan. Everyone wants to come up with a backup plan for how we're going to execute operations with when the orders. Have you ever been asked to do that?
Speaker 2
[00.20.56]
We. We did have one at my last site. We actually had two, two different plans. I'm very familiar.
Speaker 1
[00.21.05]
The plans are usually just. Just worthless. Like, we're just. We're just gonna, uh, you know, crush our body, um, and. Yeah. And suck every and
Speaker 2
[00.21.15]
everything goes on the window.
Speaker 1
[00.21.16]
Yeah. All right. Lastly, my last question for you. So what does it mean if an employee is on light duty?
Speaker 2
[00.21.26]
Um, that means that, uh, they want the paycheck. Uh, but they would rather be at home in bed. Uh, because they cannot, uh, walk. It can move. They really. They really can't do anything.
Speaker 1
[00.21.45]
Look, for the managers out there, I see you because HR is always coming to you and say, hey, we need more light duty. We need more light duty jobs. You're like, there's nothing. There's nothing we could do for someone that can only lift 5 and can only stand up for 30 minutes out of every hour. There's no jobs. There's no jobs for these restrictions. So. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2
[00.22.07]
well, well, Ben, I, I have some terms. I'm, I'm interested in hearing you define. So, uh, what does the term cross training. Really.
Speaker 1
[00.22.18]
Okay. Cross training means that HR wants the employees to. Or the leadership wants their employees to be more developed, which is a good thing, right? Good. Like, we all want employees to be developed. If it comes from the CFO, it's in response to ops managers requesting more labor. Yeah. No no no no no no no, we have more to you. You retrain and cross train the people we have. We're not getting more. Yeah. You use the talent pool you have. Which I agree with. It's like, well, you know that it costs time and money to cross train employees up front. Right. That's true. What? Yeah. What?
Speaker 2
[00.23.07]
Logic. Okay. Well, what about what does it mean to have a seek to understand conversation?
Speaker 1
[00.23.14]
Okay. A seed to understand conversation means that I am 99.99999% sure that I do know the answer to the question, but. But the leadership doesn't want me to come off as an asshole, um, to the employees and jump the conclusion. So hello, I don't really understand why you were standing around the time clock for 20 minutes prior to the shift in, and I desperately seek to know this. Can you help me to understand? I think I'm going to use that phrase the next time. Uh, I desperately seek to know this.
Speaker 2
[00.23.59]
I desperately seek to know why you weren't doing what you were supposed to be doing. Okay. What about what is a deep dive?
Speaker 1
[00.24.08]
A deep dive? Yeah. Perfect. So deep dive is a term that Amazonians think is unique to Amazon. Okay. And then when they're working with non amazonians, they substitute thorough analysis in place of it only to have the people say, oh you mean deep dive. And then they respond with yeah I did I do mean deep dive. How do you know what that means.
Speaker 2
[00.24.35]
I guess I guess Amazon is exclusive. Okay. Okay. So this one, this one I don't know if our warehousing listener will know, but what is a Tiger team.
Speaker 1
[00.24.50]
Oh, man. Okay, so here's a deep breath. Are you ready?
Speaker 2
[00.24.54]
I don't know if I'm ready for deep breath. Okay. Uh, Tiger team, a small team of people throwing shade on current operations while offering their unsolicited opinions, backed by no intimate knowledge of specifics at the site, with no real, measurable results from future positive impact. Basically, they just talk about stuff. That's what I
Speaker 1
[00.25.21]
will take that
Speaker 2
[00.25.24]
that none of your answers were in the star format. And so I think you're taking this, uh, Tiger team shade very seriously.
Speaker 1
[00.25.34]
Yeah, I, uh, I'm not.
Speaker 2
[00.25.38]
Well, you heard it here first, Tiger. Uh, Ben is about the bullshit weight. I bet that's why this podcast is about warehousing bullshit and banter. It all makes sense now if you made it this far. Thank you for listening. If you like the vibe of the show, or you have a topic that you want to hear in the future again, you can find us on Spotify and the Warehousing Underground website. Thank you, Ben, for taking a break from creating AI generated warehouse people to do another episode.
Speaker 1
[00.26.13]
Yeah, yeah. No, it's my pleasure. Right? Like we do it. We don't do it for us. We do it. We do it for the people out there. If you're working out there, warehouses, FX decks, like we see it, you know we do. We get it. We get what? We get what you're going through. And and thanks for tuning in to the show and hope and spread the word and catch, uh, catch more in the future. Thanks, Jordan.
Speaker 2
[00.26.34]
Thank you. Ben. Until next time.
Speaker 1
[00.26.36]
Bye, guys.
