Handled It: The Supply Chain Podcast

Carolina Handling
  • 5.0 (10)
  • Business
  • Updated Biweekly

The supply chain is more connected, automated, and data-driven than ever, yet most leaders still feel like they’re managing chaos instead of progress. Handled It: The Supply Chain Podcast confronts that complexity head-on. Hosted by Joe Perkins and Brent Hillabrand from Carolina Handling, each episode explores how top operations leaders build resilient systems that withstand labor shortages, rising costs, and constant change. If you lead operations, distribution, or warehouse teams, this show delivers the conversations, frameworks, and field-tested lessons you need.

  1. 4d ago

    You Sold the Same Item Twice

    Omnichannel fulfillment is becoming one of the biggest challenges in modern retail, but what happens when the customer promise gets ahead of the supply chain? In this episode, Joe Perkins, Brent Hillabrand, and guests Alex Haines and Aaron Lambe, from Toyota Automated Logistics, break down how retailers can balance store inventory, distribution centers, fulfillment costs, and customer expectations without creating unnecessary complexity. You’ll learn why real-time inventory visibility, flexible automation, and smarter fulfillment strategies are critical to keeping same-day, curbside, and e-commerce promises. The conversation explores how retailers are turning stores into fulfillment nodes, the hidden costs of store-level picking, the role of AI and supply chain orchestration, and why order profiles should influence automation and distribution center decisions. Alex and Aaron also share practical insights on inventory allocation, replenishment, warehouse design, data quality, and when retailers should optimize what they already have instead of investing in new facilities or technology. In this episode, you will learn: Understand how omnichannel fulfillment impacts inventory, stores, distribution centers, and the customer experience Learn why disconnected systems and inaccurate inventory data can undermine fulfillment promises Explore the tradeoffs between store fulfillment, distribution center fulfillment, and localized fulfillment nodes See how automation, AI, and supply chain orchestration can improve inventory visibility and fulfillment efficiency Learn why your order profile should guide warehouse design, automation, and capital investment decisions Don’t risk making customer promises your supply chain can’t keep. Learn how to build a more flexible, efficient omnichannel fulfillment strategy that works in the real world.

  2. Sep 3

    Your Team Isn't Slow. Your Technology Is

    Everybody is talking about the labor shortage. Almost nobody is asking the better question. In this episode of Handled It, Joe Perkins and Brent Hillabrand sit down with Eddie Lowry, Automation Systems Engineer at Carolina Handling, and Alex Haines, Head of Accounts at Toyota Automated Logistics, to make the case that most operations don't have a labor problem at all — they have a tooling problem. If your instinct when the numbers slip is to post another job ad, this conversation will challenge where that next dollar should actually go. The group gets specific fast: why so many warehouse managers still read "moving" as "productive," why an empty forklift raises eyebrows but an empty-handed picker doesn't, and how operators learn to look busy just to get by. From there it's a practical tour of what augmentation actually looks like on a floor — goods-to-person, AMRs, conveyor, vertical lift modules, shuttles — and an honest accounting of why these projects fail. Spoiler: it's almost never the equipment. Eddie and Alex get into over-scoping and under-scoping, the assumptions buried in every proposal, the machine rate that doesn't survive contact with a real human being, and the financing and phasing options most operators don't know exist. In this episode, you will learn: Why "we can't find people" is often a tooling problem wearing a labor-shortage costumeWhy managers reward movement instead of output, and what that costs youHow to decide whether the next dollar goes to a new hire or a new toolWhat actually kills automation projects, and why the box is rarely the culpritWhy you should never automate a process you haven't mappedHow scaling in, financing, and phased rollouts lower the barrier to entryWhy the biggest return may be the people who stop quittingYour team isn't slow. Your technology is. Learn how to take the walking, the searching, and the repetition out of the job so the people you already have can do work worth a human's time.

  3. Aug 20

    Why Complexity Is Quietly Eating Your Margin

    Complexity doesn’t announce itself. It accumulates. One extra approval. One redundant system. One workaround that quietly becomes standard practice. Before long, the operation is slower, costlier, and more frustrating despite having more tools and processes than ever. In this POV episode of Handled It, Joe Perkins and Brent Hillabrand are joined by Ashley Watkins and Woody Paschal of Carolina Handling to unpack complexity as a hidden cost that rarely appears on a P&L but affects every line of it. Woody shares real-world examples from the field, including a segmented manufacturing operation where “pockets of simplicity” quietly added up to system-wide complexity, and a customer who saved more than $25,000 a year simply by adding a pickup to an already scheduled return trip. The group explores how complexity creeps in without anyone consciously choosing it, how a “process Frankenstein” is built one reasonable decision at a time, why 30% of warehouse labor is spent on non-value-adding work, and why the solution is almost always subtraction, not addition. In this episode, you will learn: Why complexity is something you accumulate, not choose, and why it rarely fixes itself How “pockets of simplicity” create system-wide complexity Why adding process is easy, but removing it is hard What 30% non-value-adding labor really costs Why subtraction beats addition in process improvement When technology simplifies operations and when it adds complexity How Carolina Handling uses data to reveal the real problem The most expensive thing in your operation is the one that never shows up in a budget line. Learn how to find it and take it back.

  4. Aug 6

    The One Thing You Underfund That Controls Your Uptime

    Maintenance isn't a line item to cut when the month gets tight. It's the strategy that quietly decides your uptime, your costs, and your culture. In this episode of Handled It, Joe Perkins and Brent Hillabrand are joined by David Horak and Lauren Murphy to unpack the reactive maintenance trap: why operational disasters rarely start with a catastrophic failure, but with one PM that got pushed, and then another. From PM compliance and telematics to total cost of ownership and the partnership model behind Carolina Handling's own 10,000-asset fleet, the group breaks down why the cheapest-looking maintenance decision this month is often the most expensive one next quarter. They get into the "stability vs. chaos" gap between a scheduled visit and an emergency call, how deferred maintenance erodes both the equipment and the people running it, and why a documented 3–5x ROI on preventive maintenance still loses, because the real barrier is cultural, not financial. In this episode, you will learn: Why reactive maintenance disasters start with one pushed PM How deferring maintenance "saves" money now and compounds into bigger spend later Why PM compliance is a leading indicator of operational health How telematics turns firefighting into fireproofing Why maintenance is a culture, retention, and safety issue, not just a mechanical one Why total cost of ownership, not purchase price, should be the first number on the table

  5. Jul 23

    The Lean Habit That Separates Good Floors From Great Ones

    The daily huddle and the visual management board are two of the most powerful, and most consistently wasted, tools on any operations floor. In this episode of Handle It, Joe Perkins, Brent Hillabrand, Ryan Tiller, and Ashley Watkins break down what separates a 10-minute meeting that transforms a shift from a mandatory gathering everyone dreads and nobody acts on. From the football scoreboard analogy to why a board loses all its power the moment the data is wrong, the group gets specific on what great actually looks like: short, consistent huddles, associate ownership that drives behavior instead of just tracking it, and the counterintuitive truth that finding more problems means the system is working. Run with discipline, a huddle and a whiteboard become the operating system your floor actually runs on. In this episode, you will learn: Why most shift meetings are expensive, habitual, and pointless What a great huddle looks like: standing, under 15 minutes, ownership assigned Why a board loses all its integrity the moment the data is wrong How to run a huddle when you walk into a five-alarm fire Why finding more problems means the system is working How to hand the board to associates so it drives behavior, not just tracking Why "problems are good" and what hiding them really signals

  6. Jul 9

    Why Misleading Metrics Are Killing Your Operation

    Not all KPIs tell the truth. In this episode of Handled It, Joe Perkins, Brent Hillabrand, and Justin sit down with Adam Flood, Executive Director of Supply Chain at Wellstar Health, to break down the metrics that feel right but lead operations in the wrong direction. From cost-per-pick and fleet utilization to fill rates and incentive pay structures, this conversation exposes how chasing the wrong numbers creates misalignment, gaming, and downstream damage to the customers you're trying to serve. Adam brings real-world examples from healthcare supply chain — including how switching from pallets to carts saved frontline staff 90 minutes a day — and introduces the concept of the "feel rate": not just whether you filled the order, but whether the customer actually felt it. The group also digs into Goodhart's Law, leading vs. lagging indicators, how to build empowered teams that drive their own metrics, and why simplifying your dashboard may be the most powerful operational move you make. In this episode, you will learn: Why cost-per-pick, fill rate, and fleet utilization can mislead more than they reveal How lagging indicators create reactive, firefighting cultures What the "feel rate" is and why it matters more than fill rate How to stop putting ceilings on your team by over-prescribing KPIs Why Goodhart's Law says when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure How to tailor dashboards for different levels of your organization Your best-looking metric may be your biggest blind spot. Learn how to shift from measuring what's easy to measuring what's true — so your operation performs where it actually counts.

  7. Jun 25

    Why Your Operation Is Failing Before You Know It

    Operational failures don't come out of nowhere. In this episode of Handled It, Joe Perkins and Brent Hillabrand sit down with Meredith Steinmeyer, Director of Fleet Services and Energy at Floor & Decor, to break down the three weak points quietly eroding performance in operations everywhere: handoffs, visibility gaps, and single points of failure. Meredith brings real-world perspective from scaling Floor & Decor from 149 to 270+ stores, managing over 3,000 material handling assets, and navigating everything from COVID disruptions to hydrogen infrastructure risks. This conversation challenges the common assumption that operational breakdowns are unpredictable. The signals are almost always there. The problem is that leaders aren't in the field, the silos are too high, and by the time leadership feels the pain, the customer already has. In this episode, you will learn: Why handoffs don't break operations immediately — they quietly erode performance until the customer feels it How visibility gaps shift operations from controlled to reactive What single points of failure look like in people, systems, and equipment Why you can't justify preventing downtime if you can't quantify it How Floor & Decor uses pink reach trucks, monthly strategy cadences, and cross-functional pilots to stay ahead of failure Your operation isn't broken — but it might be signaling. Learn how to build the visibility, accountability, and team connection that keeps failure from becoming a surprise.

  8. Jun 11

    Why Great Operators Don’t Always Make Great Leaders

    Servant leadership is not soft leadership. In this episode of Handle It, Joe Perkins and Brent Hillabrand sit down with Ryan Tiller and Will Jones, President/CEO of Thompson Children & Family Focus and author, to unpack what servant leadership actually looks like inside real operations, distribution teams, and frontline environments. This conversation challenges the common mistake of promoting great operators into leadership roles without giving them the tools, mindset, or development they need to succeed.  From the “flight attendant flying the jet” analogy to daily huddles, floor check-ins, turnover, trust, and the hidden cost of command-and-control leadership, this episode breaks down why leadership is the variable every operation feels but few actually measure. Joe, Brent, Ryan, and Will discuss how strong leaders build trust before tough conversations, stop rescuing people by doing their work for them, and create teams that perform because people feel supported, empowered, and held to a clear standard. In this episode, you will learn: Why great operators do not automatically make great leaders How servant leadership impacts trust, morale, retention, and performance Why leaders should stop doing the work for the people they lead How to build real check-ins during the first hour of a shift Why protecting the standard starts with catching people doing things right  Turning your best operator into an unsupported leader can be risky! Learn how to develop leadership that builds trust, improves performance, and helps teams handle pressure without falling into constant firefighting.

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The supply chain is more connected, automated, and data-driven than ever, yet most leaders still feel like they’re managing chaos instead of progress. Handled It: The Supply Chain Podcast confronts that complexity head-on. Hosted by Joe Perkins and Brent Hillabrand from Carolina Handling, each episode explores how top operations leaders build resilient systems that withstand labor shortages, rising costs, and constant change. If you lead operations, distribution, or warehouse teams, this show delivers the conversations, frameworks, and field-tested lessons you need.

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