Grocery & cold-chain logistics · Case 06
Ground-ops flow for a high-mix grocery fulfillment center
High-mix grocery fulfillment lives or dies on ground operations — how product is received, put away, picked, and shipped through a temperature-controlled building running around the clock. This engagement standardised that flow and documented it so it survives a shift change.
The problem
A fulfillment center running ambient, chilled, and freezer product on multiple shifts accumulates tribal knowledge fast: the right putaway zone for a tote, the pre-receiving checks that stop a bad pallet, the way returns and third-party shipments actually move. When that lives only in people's heads, every new hire is a slow ramp and every process drifts.
The approach
I wrote the standard work the operation was missing — a WMS putaway job aid mapping every putaway type and zone across ambient, chilled, and freezer; a receiving-transaction work instruction for the RF process; facility layout references; and the third-party shipping and anaerobic-digestion / returns flow. The documentation is built to be handed to a supervisor and used on the floor, not filed.
The result
Ground operations that run the same way on every shift, a faster ramp for new staff, and on-time delivery tracked against a weighted baseline instead of a gut feel.
Client identity withheld. Drawings, configurations, and deliverables are available under mutual NDA. The operations documentation set is in the vault.
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