Sr Material Handler Warehouse Support

Work Schedule

Standard (Mon-Fri)

Environmental Conditions

Able to lift 40 lbs. without assistance, Warehouse

Job Description

As part of the Thermo Fisher Scientific team, you’ll discover meaningful work that makes a positive impact on a global scale. Join our colleagues in bringing our Mission to life every single day to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. We provide our global teams with the resources needed to achieve individual career goals while helping to take science a step beyond by developing solutions for some of the world’s toughest challenges, like protecting the environment, making sure our food is safe or helping find cures for cancer.

Purpose of the Job

To support the warehouse operation in the EDC in Bleiswijk by investigating and resolving issues with inbound orders, outbound orders, stock, locations, and general system issues, so that the operational teams can receive, pick, pack and ship all orders on time.

The Senior Specialist Warehouse Support SMT performs the same tasks as the Specialist Warehouse Support SMT. Additional tasks and capabilities/responsibilities are listed below the standard tasks.

Job and Position Context

The EDC in Bleiswijk is the main European Distribution Center in Europe, shipping to customers on the European continent, Africa, and the Middle East. Inventory is received from manufacturing sites and suppliers from all over the world.

The site is ISO9001 and GDP certified, and a ThermoFisher Zero Waste site.

The EDC ships > 1mn orders per year out to customers and other ThermoFisher sites.

It holds > $ 50mn of inventory stored on > 66K different bin locations, spread over ambient, cold room (+5C) and frozen (-18C) walk-in areas, and -80C and -170C freezer chests.

Stock is stored as item numbers or SKUs (Stock Keeping Units), and most SKUs are also lot controlled. Both SKU and lot number need to be managed and recorded throughout the warehouse processes.

There are 4 separate ERP systems in which stock and inbound & outbound orders are registered: SAP, Arrow, and E1 with WMS. This spread of complex processes over the different systems makes stock management, cycle counting, and all administration of orders very complicated and challenging.

Despite this, stock accuracy is kept over 97.5%, and shipping accuracy is over 99.7%. These accuracies are critical, since customers’ research can depend on getting the correct SKU/Lot delivered consistently throughout their projects.

All employees at the EDC are required to perform their tasks in accordance with the EDC QMS, and to participate in a number of EH&S, PPI, and Lean activities:

• Reporting potentially hazardous situations in the SHED reporting tool
• Daily Tier meeting with their teams to discuss yesterday’s results and planning for today
• Participate in 5S initiatives and checks to keep warehouse and offices organized and efficient.

Job Content

Key Areas of accountability/responsibility

Within the Warehouse Support team there are 4 specializations, each with their focus on a separate area of resolving issues: Inbound, Cycle Count, Stock Management and Packing & Outbound Support (POS).

The main tasks for a specialist WS SMT are:

• Run reports periodically to determine which items should be included in replenishment activities (all items that are picked so often that they need to be moved to locations most ideally placed for picking activities).
• For all ‘replen’ items, load stock reports into the Access database several times per day and generate replen tasks based on the stock levels on the fastpick locations.
• Physically move stock from regular stock locations to fastpick locations, and use a handheld computer to book the transfer in the relevant system.  Determine the quantity that can be moved based on location size and orders that are already allocated.
• Perform bin checks on warehouse locations to check stock accuracy, and investigate and resolve any discrepancies.
• Optimize warehouse location usage by combining SKU/lots on multiple locations to one location, and moving small quantities of material from large locations to smaller ones, to free up the large locations. This is usually done by request of, and sometimes working together with, the inbound warehouse dept.
• Receive the monthly scrap authorization lists, and perform the scrapping of the SKUs/lots listed: Combine Excel sheets of scrap list and stock list to verify quantities and locations, and book these from stock in the applicable system using the correct finance codes. Then physically pick all SKUs from the stock locations, and process them for scrapping.
• Receive HOLD notifications from global QA by email and whenever necessary, block the stock in the system, label the location as blocked, and confirm back to QA. When hold is released, perform the same tasks in reverse.
• Run stock reports to find SKUs that are in incorrect locations types (wrong system, (protected) reserve or active, and correct this by adjusting the system or physically moving the SKU).
• Assist OM and the service organization with moving stock between systems for specific customer orders, when the automatic process fails or is too slow.
• Monitor system and operation for items that needs to be returned to stock from somewhere in the outbound process, and place them in a correct location so they are available for new orders.
• Monitor the shared mailbox and respond to questions from other departments within and outside of the EDC.
• Keep track of performance by compiling metrics and KPIs (e.g. % of orderlines picked from fastpick locations vs regular locations).

The Senior specialist is a more knowledgeable team member, experienced on all the main tasks, who can train new colleagues and serve as an advisor to the other WS specialists.

• Responsible for giving input for creating and updating work instructions for SMT to the coordinator or team leader, if they don’t do this themselves.
• Participates in global or local projects on behalf of SMT when required.

Apart from being experienced on all main tasks for SMT, the senior specialist has at least one other specialization within warehouse support, for which several daily tasks can be executed independently. This means adding value by being able to assist during times of absence of other specialists, or during quarter ends when the workload in specific areas can become extremely high.

Authorities

The senior specialist WS checks and corrects stock where needed in all systems. Stock corrections have a financial impact, and the senior specialist is authorized to make corrections for discrepancies that have no clear root cause for a value up to $1000. If a root cause is clear, the limit is $2000.

For corrections related to intercompany shipments, all necessary corrections can be made without a value limit.

The senior specialist WS can contact other departments within the EDC, planning, customer care, service, QA, etc. either as part of the regular process, or for resolution of issues.

The senior specialist is responsible for checking if IT needs to be contacted when a system issue is discovered, to confirm if it is really an IT issue or rather a business issue.

The senior specialist WS has an impact on the speed and quality of service to our customers, either directly by correcting orders so they can move on in the process, or by checking and correcting stock so it is available to ship to customers. The impact of mistakes can be significant because of consequences to product quality and speed of delivery to the customers of the items they need for their operations.

A Senior WS Specialist can initiate and change work instructions in QDMS for their main specialization.

Complexity of the Job

The resolution of issues requires checking and collating information from multiple systems to assess if the stock of a specific SKU/lot or on a specific location is correct or not, and the ability to deduce what might have happened from historical data in the systems when stock is incorrect, or when orders have not progressed through the systems as expected.

Questions that come in from other departments often require investigation of activities in multiple departments, and deduction of root cause and resolution. If the root cause is not clear for system-related issues, the specialist WS will contact a senior specialist, who may in turn contact a Business Analyst or IT to help investigate.

A Senior WS Specialist basically performs the same tasks as a WS Specialist, but is more experienced and knowledgeable, meaning they will often tackle more complex issues and more sensitive communications.

Knowledge and educational level

Minimum of MBO level 4, either by education or by relevant work experience.

Good working knowledge of Microsoft Office, esp. Outlook and Excel.

Languages: English and at least basic knowledge of Dutch, both verbal and written.

Required Level of Experience

Minimum of 2 years’ experience as a WS Specialist.

Competencies

A keen eye for details and accuracy.

Analytical and problem-solving capabilities

A sense of ownership and accountability.

Ability to cope well with change.

Additional for a Senior specialist SMT:

A strong sense of ownership for SMT.

Excellent communication skills, ability to train others.

Pro-active attitude to continuous improvement.