Shoutout to the ops manager who said KPIs kill common sense

Overheard a regional director at a conference in Phoenix say that tracking every single metric makes people focus on the numbers instead of the actual work. She pointed out how one warehouse team spent 3 weeks optimizing pick times but totally ignored the fact their product was stacked wrong. Made me wonder, are we measuring stuff just to measure it or does it actually help the floor run better?

2 comments

2 Comments

mila_craig48d ago

So the ops manager realized the team was gaming the system, right? They hit their pick time targets but made a mess that cost way more time later. That's exactly the problem with chasing numbers without looking at the bigger picture. Did the director ever say if that warehouse team got punished for the bad stacking or rewarded for the fast picks? Because that's where the real lesson is. If management only looked at the KPI dashboard and gave them a bonus, then the system is broken, not the workers. But if someone caught the stacking issue and held them accountable, then maybe the KPI wasn't the enemy, just how it was used.

grant.richard8d ago

Yeah you might be right actually. I used to think KPIs were the main problem but your example shows how management uses them matters way more. If nobody checked the stacks and they just got a bonus that's on the system, not the workers gaming it.