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The New Warehouse podcast hosted by Kevin Lawton is your source for insights and ideas from the distribution, transportation, and logistics industry. A new episode every Monday morning brings you the latest from industry experts and thought leaders. And now, here's Kevin.

Hey, it's Kevin with the new warehouse podcast bringing you a new episode today. And on today's episode, I have a new guest on that's, I think, a long time overdue to come on the podcast, I will say, I'm going to be joined by Adrian Betts. He is an operations excellence consultant and owner of expand your a company focused on operational excellence and improving warehouse operations all and

You may have seen him around LinkedIn as well with super creative posts and almost, I'll say, some warehouse poetry in a sense, the way he comments and adds some flavor in there. And I like the way he goes about that. So we're going to talk a little bit about his background today, what his company is all about, and what he's seeing out there in the operations world as he goes out there to improve these warehouses on a daily basis. So Adrian, welcome to the show, sir. How are you?

I'm excited to be here, Kevin. Thanks for having me.

Definitely. Excited to get you on. We've been talking about this for a little while, so I finally got it on the calendar and here we are. And super interested to, I know you a little bit, we've connected, but definitely interested to dive a little deeper. So why don't we kick it off here? Tell us a little bit about your background, I guess, in the space, how you ended up in the space and kind of how that led to starting your own company.

Yeah, so it all started back in the year 2000. So this is my 25th year in the industry, 20th year in management and about the last five in consulting. So most of my experience was in the first 10 years of my experience was last mile between UPS and FedEx. Then I've done some big box distribution.

where I learned how to be a capacity captain, a production controller. So long range and short term planning with the people across multiple departments, as well as where the product is in the warehouse. And then I also did a startup with the fulfillment center, which is 1.2 million square feet, 600 employees. So between fulfillment centers, distribution centers, and last mile delivery stations, that's pretty much my briar patch in my backyard.

Gotcha. Interesting. So definitely a lot of experience there. And I didn't realize you had that much experience, actually, 25 years. That's pretty good. So more than me, actually, definitely. Awesome.

So, you know, very interesting. And obviously, you know, a lot of different scenarios there, too. I will say from, you know, like you said, big box retail to startup to these last mile delivery stations, a lot of different interesting things going there. But I imagine a lot of potential synergies, too, that can carry over from

from position to position or building to building. But I mean, tell us a little bit about when you decided to, because five years ago, I mean, that's kind of pandemic times, right? So interesting time to, you know, decide to go out on your own, start a company and do something like that. So I guess tell us a little bit about, you know, what you were thinking there, you know, what you were taking away from your experience that, you know, made you want to be on the consulting side and doing what you're doing now.

So, yeah, it actually it actually goes back 21 years to 2004. I had started Expandure and the first time something went wrong, I threw my hands up and said, oh, business isn't for me. And then around 2017, I started it again. And I said, said three things. I said crystal clear Pepsi. OK, purple and green ketchup and Pontiac Aztec.

And all three of those were massive failures for Pepsi, Heinz, and of course, General Motors. But all three of these corporations are still around. And so I said, that's how you're going to approach this moving forward. You're going to get out there. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to screw things up, but you will never fold your own company. Right. So try to be all things to all people. And we know how that turns out.

uh so around towards the end of 2020 going into 2021 is where i started to niche down okay and i talk about the you know most of my background is in those three types of warehouses it it happened where i was actually looking for a weekend shift senior ops manager role i like weekends i like nights and the question was

"Have you ever thought about being a consultant?" And I was like, "No, I want to work on the weekends." And he said, "Nah, so be a consultant." So I was a 5S consultant. And prior to that, I'd heard 5S and couldn't tell you the 5S is in order. Now it's like the back of my hand and fairly common sense. And the amount of red tape and bureaucracy you can avoid as a consultant,

is very pleasing to me. It allows me, because I honestly think you could probably do about a 10 to 12 hour shift worth of work in about four to five as a consultant, if you don't have to deal with all the bureaucracy and rigmarole. So it allows you to be very effective in the same amount of time compared to being an employee. And as I navigated through all these different companies,

I saw things that were similar across the board, but also it allowed me to have a good starting point, but still be dynamic enough that each time I provided a solution, it was unique to that company. And it gives me a lot of gratitude that there is no cookie cutter solution. Yeah, there's an off the shelf. Here's how you make a cake, flour, egg, oil, and sugar. But then in the world of cakes, it's an infinite variety of cakes.

So get ready for a lot of analogies, but that's kind of how I explain it. No two warehouses are alike even in the same company. So if you have a network that has 10 distribution centers, like let's take last weekend, for example, my distribution center in Atlanta had to worry about shoveling snow. Big deal. Oh my gosh, snow. My distribution center in Orlando, they're like,

We don't have that problem. Yeah. But the distribution center in Detroit is like, it's snow. What's the big deal? That's what I got to do. Yeah.

Right. So you have three different companies in the same or three different buildings in the same company that even still they each have their own unique challenge. So that's the part that's fun for me is that it's not boring. I like dumpster fires and it's almost like the worse it is, the better it is for me. And a building that's running perfectly, I have no purpose there. I'm going to be bored to tears. Yeah.

Gotcha. Interesting. And it's not often you hear somebody say that they love dumpster fires, right? So usually they're trying to run away from dumpster fires. So definitely a brave man, I will say, we have here. Sorry.

You know, very, very interesting there and how you kind of found that niche, I guess, in a sense to come into and focus on. So tell us, tell us about the name too, because you told me this before we started recording here, but Expand Your, right? So tell us about the idea behind that. I think it's really good. Yeah. So it's a...

It's expand, expand your, like expand your LLC, expand your operations, expand your bench depth, expand your capabilities, expand your capacity. So whatever you're looking to expand, the knowledge that I bring is going to allow you to do so. Whether you want to go from, you know, 50,000 feet to 500,000 square feet, one building to two buildings, two to 10, 10 to 100.

So that's, that's why I wanted it intentionally misspelled kind of like Kleenex. And it was actually inspired by the company Expedix. Oh, okay.

Yeah. They had a lot of influence on, on that. Nice. Nice. Okay. Very interesting. So, so now tell us too, I mean, your, your services, right? I mean, like what, what does a typical engagement with you look like? Cause you were just mentioning, you know, you know, you have, I guess there's a company you're engaged with that has a distribution center in Atlanta, one in Detroit, one in Orlando. Tell us,

you know, what does a typical engagement with you look like? Is it focused mostly on 5S or is like overall operational improvement? What do you do? So I've been senior ops before, site lead, things like that. So it's that person who is at the head of the building, what are all the things they need to be focused on? And what we go after is,

Again, that dumpster fire analogy, nobody gets promoted to a building that's running well. You're going to get promoted to a dumpster fire. And what nobody likes to tell you is you have about 12 months to start moving the needle on a variety of metrics. Otherwise, you become part of the problem. And these three services that I go after allow that person to

to not only be successful, but to do so by tapping into everybody on their own team, everybody across departments. And then once you get those two aligned, actually dialing in how the operation and organization runs as a whole. Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's really interesting at the point in which you're coming in, right? Because there's a lot of things that are probably

gone wrong, right? Whether it's, you know, from cultural aspect in the building, you know, bad leadership, just maybe bad systems, maybe processes aren't quite what they should be. Maybe things were rushed when they got started in that building, you know, whatever the case may be, but you're coming in at this point and, you know, essentially kind of trying to help to save things, right? So, you know, when it comes to that, I mean, tell us a little bit about, because you're

Call yourself an operations excellence consultant. Right. So I guess tell us in your eyes, what what does operational excellence look like? What does that mean? So it's definitely going to start with what does right look like? And that has to be well defined. And so that's the very first thing we start with. We start with building the operations team.

and making them so strong that you can enjoy going to the restroom or going out for lunch or enjoy your nights and weekends again. And the very first thing you have to start with is making sure that all the processes

are documented in an electronic format, right? So I've walked into buildings that have post-it notes stuck to the wall and that's their SOP. Or Kevin is the one who knows how to do this. He's been doing this for the last 10 years. He's never taken a vacation. He'll be good for another 20. Well, Kevin gets angry or he wins the lottery or his 10-year anniversary comes up and he's like, guys, I told you I'm going. And I've seen companies with

with 100, 200 and 500 people where one person goes on vacation and the operation falls apart until that person returns. So that's a big reason for that one. Again, number two, making sure you have the right people in the right amount of people. And this is where I have an HR hat.

You know, they said I'll never, ever work in H.R., but I can do a lot of H.R. things. Right. So it's not hard to find people. Right. And this is this is what I say when it comes to finding the right people. If you go to Google right now, open up Google and in the search bar, you don't type anything and you hit enter. Google is going to look at you like, OK, what do you want me to look at? It's too broad.

Right. If you're looking for a vehicle to purchase, you don't look by VIN number because it's too narrow. Right. So you enter in a couple of key features that you're looking for. Hey, I need something that gets 30 miles a gallon, that seats five people and is, you know, midsize. You type in those three keywords. Eighty five percent of what you're not looking for is filtered out.

So now I can make a much quicker decision on the people that I'm interviewing. And for the most part, if I call you in for an interview, Kevin, you're going to get the job unless you say something goofy like what's a barcode. So now what I do is I bring in I can hire 16 people in one day, one eight hour day. And I know I'm going to hire you.

I filtered you out. I looked at your resume. I'm just making sure you are who you are and you don't say anything. I do that every week. Takes about seven to 10 days for the background check to come back at the latest. And every two weeks, I get two people in my orientation class. And I do that for 20 pay periods out the year.

I don't do it in November because it's the playoffs. I don't do it in December because it's the playoffs. And I don't do it in January because it's the layoffs. And that's how I can get 640 people. I'll show you how to get 640 rock stars in a nine month time frame by yourself while still running the operation. So most people say, well, I don't need 640 people. And then my question to you is, why do you have anybody who's underperforming?

Interesting. So you're kind of making that plan to have the cushion, right, for that turnover essentially, right? Yeah. And then it gets better when we have the orientation.

It's a reason I have it every two weeks. I don't want to overwhelm my HR trying to keep up the files, and I don't want to overwhelm my trainers because the trainer training ratio is very important. And that two weeks allows them to get the new hires off the ground before the next wave comes in. Here's something I hear a lot of companies say, oh, man, we have a week three associate training a week one associate, or we're calling somebody a veteran because they've been there longer than 90 days.

Red flags. Yeah. Yeah. So the orientation, um, and this goes all the way back to the very beginning of my career. My first orientation was like two to four days. We didn't touch anything on the floor and any environment we did was in a test environment where we got to scan. We got to log into the device. We got to be familiar with the process and screw it up in a test environment. And then once we got to the floor, we knew the basics. Hmm.

So a lot of companies may think that they're saving money by putting people to work on day one, but it's actually costing you several times that because of all the defects and quality errors you have to fix because you've never spent the time with them to understand the process in the first place. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a great point there. And, you know, it's very interesting because...

There is like, I think, a misconception there, like you just pointed out, right? There is like that idea that

well, I'm not going to invest that much into training and, you know, setting up a test environment and all these things. Or it's, you know, while we're so short on people, like we need to get them out there, right? And get things moving. So, I mean, tell us a little bit from your experience and implementing kind of this program that you're talking about here. I mean, what does that look like on...

like the return side, right. For somebody that's maybe in the mindset of like, Ooh, that seems like a lot of money upfront to put out when our turnover is, you know, 90%, you know, why would I invest so much when out of the 20 people I bring in, like 15, aren't going to make it past a month. Right. So tell us kind of what you've seen as some of the, the results there and the return on making like that upfront investment.

Yeah. So when I say that I'm involved in my own hiring, I'm the one who's going to have to manage them. Yeah.

all day. So I want to be, or this is, I want to show you how to say, okay, it's not that hard. You don't have to be a full-time recruiter to do this. Type in the three keywords. We had 2000 applicants. I typed in Microsoft word because I needed people to help document SOPs electronically. Okay. Microsoft Excel, because I needed people to help with inventory and reach truck because I needed to be able to bring the replens down. Okay.

Out of 2000 applicants, I pulled up 125 that met the criteria. I hired 16. They all came in and I'll send them off a background, drug screens. Hey, it came back. Here's when the start date is. When they came, I opened the door for them. Hey, I'm Adrian. Welcome to the team. I was up to the first day of orientation. I had a little lunch and sat down with them. So now I've got five to seven touches with these new hires before they ever hit the floor.

So any negativity that is out there on the floor that I'm trying to turn around, I've now put up a good defense around my new hires against that negative culture. The other portion is the reason people quit is because the first time they see their manager or hear from them is three weeks after they started when they're getting written up.

They're like, who are you? Oh, I'm your manager. And you made an error yesterday. Well, nobody ever told me that. That's why people quit. Right. So now all my people know exactly what to do before they hit the floor. And furthermore, once they hit the floor, we give them a 30 day onboarding period where every single day I'm going to give you feedback and say, hey, Kevin, here's the SOP that we wrote and covered. Here's what you do well. Here's what you do better.

Here's what you can do better. And let's try again. So when you focus on the technique, the speed will come. But it also lets the associate know, hey, I can ask Adrian, I can approach my manager with a question if I don't understand.

So many people just nod their head because the orientation process just pushes people through, sign these papers. Okay, you're trained. No, you just had them sign papers. And they don't really understand the process. They don't understand the procedures. They don't understand the policies.

And that's why, you know, you're like, well, if I if I say I need help or I don't understand, they're going to look at me like I'm stupid. So they don't say anything to do the best they can. And that's how you end up with, you know, a massive amount of errors. And you find out when the numbers come because you weren't observing the behaviors on the front end.

Yeah. Now, when you when you do that, what you can do well and what you can do better, that's a whole lot better than saying, hey, Kevin, here's what you screwed up on. Sign this right up. Those are the things that make people quit versus make people stay. Yeah. Yeah. And I think those are all really good points. I mean, it's interesting that.

approach there and I think you know that does make such a difference to have those early touch points from leadership right from your manager to understand that I mean I remember you know distinctly one time when I was a plant manager and you know we had temps come in and like you know by the end of the day and the next day like I knew all their names and they were like shocked right they're like

No one's ever remembered our name in a day. It makes them feel a little more, I guess, human to you in a sense and giving that connection. And I think that's a great point too about creating that shield or I guess protective bubble a little bit from those negativities that you're trying to kind of flush out of the operation. Because it certainly...

I'm sure you've seen it several times, you know, word and gossip on the warehouse floor spreads like crazy. And, you know, when there's some person out there that has some negative experience or something like they're, you know, immediately like telling the new hires, oh, you know, look out for this person or look out for that manager, right? They don't really care about this or they don't care about that, right? So I think that's a great point, right? To how do you

you know, try to shield some of that or protect that before, you know, it hits the floor and goes out there and, you know, gets involved with that.

So I know you talk a lot about, you know, kind of this hiring and employee engagement and relationship part. I see you talk a lot about it on LinkedIn there. And that's a big focus, especially as you're talking about here. It makes a lot of sense, your approach to it. But I'm curious as you go into these operations where, you know, they are a dumpster fire, as you said, right? What are some of the most common things

problems that you see happening? Like what, what are some of like the top things that almost like, you know, every operation or multiple operations that you go in, like they have the same issue. One is most of the accountability is going to be on attendance, right?

Right. And so, again, when I say I can hire 640 people and you say, I don't need 640. Guess what I can do once I get to the headcount I need and I stop the bleeding from turnover, overtime, absenteeism. I can hold those people accountable. And now when I bring the next 32 people in, but you have more than enough headcount. OK, now I look at my entire performance of my team.

from the top to the bottom and i say where's the line of expectation and everybody that's below that line of expectation i said hey guys we start having these frequent conversations at least once a week here's what you do well here's what you can do better and there's usually a progression that says hey either we close this gap or we're going to have to say that

we have to make you available to the industry right so i am not all sunshine and rainbows and that right there gets people's attention because now they start paying attention we have enough people and he's bringing more people in and he's had enough conversation so nobody's going to be surprised when i have a fourth conversation about the lack of performance improvement and i say hey we're going to part ways

So it's I start positive, right? And people may have heard the statement change people or change people. People that are existing to the organization when I come in will see, okay, he defined what right looks like and now he's holding people accountable to it. Either I will agree and comply or I will disagree and I think I'm going to go find other opportunities. And my stance is to say I will support you regardless of what you choose.

So if you decide you want to go somewhere else, you know, amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord. We thank you for your time and good luck. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's such a interesting thing. And you mentioned, um,

you know, the accountability based on just attendance, right? And I think that's a really interesting approach because you're, you know, you're essentially saying, you know, get that under control, I guess, and then, you know, almost inflate your head count a little bit because then you have the luxury to focus more on performance, right? Because I think, you know, there's situations where,

you know, you're maybe struggling to find new hires, right? Or maybe you're like below the head count you actually need to get to capacity where you need to be. And then you're like, oh, well, this person has been late three times, but I can't really let them go because I actually need them, right? So you're kind of put yourself in this bad position and then it's, you know, well, then if you don't,

you know, hold that person accountable and, you know, follow those, those steps, disciplinary steps, then like the next person that does that, right. Then it's like, well, can I rightly, you know, hold them accountable? Cause I didn't do that for the other person. It becomes like almost a, you know, a spiral, right. That you get kind of stuck in, in this cycle. So, so I love what you're saying there is like, you know, even though, you know, maybe you're allotted for this hedge head count, your budget is at this, like,

there's a time period where you need to inflate that a little bit, right. To kind of, you know, say like, okay, well, you know, performance does matter and we can hold people accountable for performance because we need to weed some people out here to get down to that core group. That's going to be here when they need to be here, but then also perform at the level that they need to perform. So,

Really great approach there. I love that. And I love the way you look at that and kind of bring that to the table there. So I'm curious, you know, you talk a lot about

themselves, right, and the human element to this and bringing in the right people and how to organize around them and make sure that they are getting the training and the onboarding that they need to succeed in the operation. So I'm curious your thoughts on a lot of these newer technologies, right, that are people, you know, some people would say are

maybe taking the place of the human worker in the warehouse or, you know, augmenting the human worker. So what do you, what do you think about some of this stuff like robotics and AI? What are your thoughts on that when it comes to putting it in the warehouse? All right. So, um, I've done this post a couple of times where I say, I love you, you sexy rusty piece of junk. And, um,

And both times it's been, um, a tri five Chevy 55 to 57 Chevy step side. It's rusted, but it's lowered. It's got a good stance, got nice wheels and you can see it's got like a good motor. So everything underneath is right where it needs to be. But the exterior, it appears old beaten, battered and bruised. Right. So, um,

We see they're called sleeper cars. So if anybody wants to look them up, sleeper cars, these are cars that look like rust buckets, buckets of junk. But if you line up against them and race for pink slips, you just might lose your car. And I'll say this about automation and tech. I have a lot of friends in automation and tech and AI, so I am not anti any of that. But we see all the time.

Where just because you add the technology, if it's misapplied, it's ineffective. All it's going to do is enhance whatever you have. So if you have a BS process with tech and automation, you're just going to have enhanced BS. I have built teams that have outperformed automation. I've built teams that are with the human element.

can operate as robotic as any robotic system. This goes to put quality, error rate, throughput, safety, any metric that we want to measure, you know, the human is still capable of competing with the technology. And 80% of warehouses currently have no kind of automation or tech. So don't think that just because you don't have AGVs, you're all going to go out of business, right? Yeah.

You can get just as much, if not a little bit more out of your team by following these processes. And we look at your overtime, right? So we just talked about the staffing. If you don't have enough people, they know you need them. You're running overtime. They're giving you whatever performance they want to 20, 30, 40% overtime. You start dialing that in and holding people accountable to what the expectation is. Your overtime comes down, your throughput goes up.

And your headcount didn't really change. So you can recoup those losses with the people. And just by recouping those losses with the people, that may be the money that you need in order to get any of the tech automation or robots that you seek to take yourself to the next level.

Interesting perspective there. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's interesting because there is a lot of talk or maybe we'll say there's a lot of like marketing. Right. And in a sense, that's like pushing some of those narratives that you talked about. Like, you know, if you don't have AGVs, like you're not going to survive into the future or things like that. But I love the analogy there with marketing.

the sleeper in a sense. And I love the fact that you said, you know, you've built teams that have outperformed automation and robotics. So, I mean, it's very interesting there. So, I mean, how do you kind of advise companies to maybe approach some of these technologies? Like what's, what do you do to, because you mentioned,

making sure that those processes essentially are solid and not automating bad process in a sense. So how do you advise companies to create that foundation if they're looking to get to that level at some point with technology? Yeah, and talking with a lot of my tech and automation and robotics peers, the correct terminology that I've come up with is I am a right sale operator.

So if you are looking at automation tech and robotics and you hear, we don't think you're ready for automation tech and robotics right now. I am a right sale, not a down sale. Right. And automation tech and robotics is not an upsell from me. Right. So let's take a look. Let's make sure all your processes are written. Let's make sure that you can stabilize your workforce, give them a good reputation.

First three to four days, you make sure that you take care of them for the first 30 days so that they understand. And then you cross train. So if one person calls out, the operation still runs. Those are things that robots are not. If you don't have that, you're going to struggle. The second piece is all the people in your front office. Are they operating in silos?

Are you the CEO, the only one who knows exactly what the company goal is? Do all departments know exactly what their goal is?

Do they know how they're going to support that? Do they know how they're going to measure it? Do we meet frequently enough and have meaningful contact with each other? And when we notice something is wrong, we make quick adjustments with intention. And then we learn from our mistakes and we avoid repeating them as soon as the next day, if not the next week, month, or quarter.

Now, once you start dialing those two pieces in, then you can look at, okay, do I have the right stuff in the right place at the right time? If you have a Christmas tree in your warehouse right now, you're toast. You're going to waste money for another eight, nine months moving that around your warehouse, right? For an example, if we go in your house, is the sour cream by the toilet?

is the toilet paper in the oven. So you can have all the automation and tech and robotics you want, but if you put things in the warehouse in an inefficient manner, it's not going to save you. So you need to understand what's coming through your warehouse, how much can come through your warehouse, when it's going out, how much it expands and contracts and when, when you need overtime, when you can let everybody off.

And that does not happen without getting all the departments to speak to each other and come out of their silos. And then I can't even get to that point until we get your operations team straight. So that's the full 360 of the services that I offer. Yeah, very interesting. And I think, you know, great statement there because, you know, it's so important to get dialed in, right, and optimized before you start to look at,

these other, you know, digital or tech layers onto something because it's not going to be like your fix-all for everything, right? It's not going to be like the band-aid that makes everything work

better if you're in a bad spot. So very interesting there and really loved digging into this and talking to you a little bit about how you approach some of this. A lot of great takeaways in this conversation, Adrian. So really appreciate you coming on the podcast and

talking with me and sharing some of these good nuggets here and some of the great analogies that I love to see also on LinkedIn all the time as well. So if people are interested in learning more from you or finding out more about Expand Your, maybe they want to expand their business, what's the best way to do that?

The best way is through LinkedIn. You can send me a direct message, connect with me. I'll shoot you a calendar invite. We hop on our complimentary 30 minute discussion and then we go from there. All right. Awesome. And we'll definitely put your LinkedIn in the show notes here as well as at the new warehouse.com. So really appreciate you coming on the show today. And thank you, Adrian, for your time again.

You've been listening to the New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin Lawton. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com. Enjoyed this episode? Make sure you are subscribed to the podcast and for more content from The New Warehouse, find us on LinkedIn and YouTube. Links to subscribe can be found in the show notes and for everything The New Warehouse, head to thenewwarehouse.com.