In 2019, one of JLL’s consumer goods clients commissioned a study of their warehousing and storage utilization at their world headquarters campus, with the long-term goal of creating a holistic storage strategy to better support their business needs. At the time, the company faced the daunting task of relocating nine buildings full of people and product into one newly constructed facility. The client turned to JLL’s Storage + Organization (S+O) team to ensure that any disarray in warehousing and storage from the old buildings didn’t carry over to the new one.

The S+O team within Project and Development Services (PDS) applies Lean principles to make the handling and storage of products more space- and time-efficient. Lean is a management approach designed to help companies improve the way they do business by eliminating waste and optimizing workflow.

As a result of their work in the Project phase, the client was able to emplace all of their materials into the building appropriately.

“The client’s original analysis indicated there would not be enough space to hold all the product coming from the legacy buildings,” said McIntyre. “However, once we consolidated all of the teams and materials into the buildings in accordance with our recommendations, the client actually found that there was plenty of space to spare.”

In addition, the initiatives implemented by S+O led to an 80% increase in processing efficiency and a 30% reduction in the amount of storage space required.

S+O’s flexibility and deep knowledge of the client’s existing setup and anticipated needs has also enabled them to serve as a bridge between the client and other PDS services like Portfolio Strategy, Occupancy Planning, Relocation Project Management, and Warehouse Management.

“There are times when the client doesn’t know how to get to the next step of something they need,” explained McIntyre. “Although the labor piece may not be in our scope of work, we know exactly who to direct the client to.”

S+O is working to expand their services to additional buildings in the client’s portfolio, as well as bringing on additional clients.

In addition, the S+O team plans to introduce a third service, Workflow Design, which would leverage their specialized Lean expertise to design and integrate people workflows in environments to eliminate waste.