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SERVICES
STRATEGY & DESIGN SERVICES
Continuum's Design Services are focused on addressing process, system and layout challenges within manufacturing and distribution facilities. While many of these service offerings have developed from custom projects performed for past clients, tailoring solutions to address specific client needs is a core focus of our company.
Simplifying, streamlining and standardizing processes are foundational to performance based organizations. Time studies show exceptions typically take ten times the effort and time to process as standard activities; driving operational processing time to double when exception handling exceeds 11% of an Associate's workday. Lean Process Design is focused on removing the waste from processes and ensuring value-added worksteps are executed within the right operation, in the proper sequence and aligned with delivering on the order-fulfillment and quality goals of the client.
Modeling a supply chain to optimize the costs and time allocated with bringing goods to market is critical in todays world. Transportation costs and duration modeling needs to be paired with evaluating and understanding the critical business needs for a client including variables such as inbound/outbound transportation characteristics, population or demand based order planning, labor availability and costs by region, and facility space availability and cost impacts. Continuum understands that these are vital to designing the right Network Strategy to support the client's future supply chain and drive sustainable operational success.
Managing inventory effectively in a building comes down to defining and implementing the right strategy for your business. Ideally, this is not just about ensuring accuracy between system records and physical locations, but configuring a process and system to ensure the product is in optimal locations and successfully replenished to reduce processing time and improve fill rates. Continuum can analyze inventory profiles, research order characteristics, and map storage and retrieval processes before building and implementing a custom strategy best fit for the company's operational needs.
Operational productivity in picking and packing functions can be negatively impacted simply by poorly designed workstations and pick cart configuration. Ergonomics, pick density, non-value-added work-steps, processing cycle time, and avoidable delays are all major draws on operational efficiency that can be easily recaptured through Workstation & Vehicle Design projects. Continuum has studied operations for years to understand how the wrong configuration or set-up can drive down facility efficiency and we can quantify the return on investment, design the solution and generate savings through these implementations.
Frequently, operational efficiency can be dictated simply by the configuration and layout where a function is performed. Travel time, upstream and downstream product flow, operational capacity and Associate performance can all be dictated by layout, process and system constrictions. Even more so, poorly designed layouts can drive non-value processes to be performed that could be simplified our to standard operations. Continuum understands how significant these impacts can be on an organization and is capable of redesigning facility layouts to support increased productivity and throughput while decreasing operational waste.
Understanding operational costs within the distribution environment can be more beneficial than simply measuring success against the goal. This information can be used to price products and services to clients, plan future distribution operations and provide leadership with critical information to pursue business growth opportunities. Continuum can build Distribution Costing Systems to map operational processes through a facility, determine current and goal level facility costs and support clients with improved planning capabilities across their distrubtion network.
Pricing logistics services accurately, especially in the 3PL/4PL worlds, is critical in understanding the supply chain costs associated with distribution networks and ensuring that a planned profitability is achieved. Too often logistics pricing fails to account for operational capabilities and efficiencies driving margins to be canibalized by operational cost overruns. Continuum specializes in developing customized pricing models to ensure competitive Logistics Pricing & Strategy are developed, but a path and plan to achieve and exceed margin expectations through operational efficiency and accountability management.
Documenting best processes and leveraging simple, straightforward work instructions is critical in standardizing work across an operation and ensuring efficiency procedures are followed. Many companies have very detailed standard operating procedures, but they are not applied effectively in operations given their structure and complexity. Other organizations have not successfully documented standard work instructions, limiting the ability to sustain operational productivity and throughput. Continuum's Work Instruction & SOP Development engagements are designed to align best practices across functions and drive consistency within operations.
