Gamification in Logistics as a Workforce Motivating Tool Çağdaş Yıldız

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Logistics and supply chain management can use gamification to improve workforce motivation in warehouse operations especially in order picking.

As automation become more popular in logistics, manual order picking is still the most common method. It is known that repetitive and intensive labor require more efforts from the physical workers. The typical order-picker activities involve combining items from receipt, storage, packing, labelling, equipment operating etc. - orders have to be fulfilled under time constraints, with as minimum no of errors as possible. Based on these challenges and the fact that order-pickers are mostly not the high-paid workers, it is known that staff motivation is a recurrent problem for efficiency in warehouse logistics - employees are exposed to the monotonous fulfillment of steady, recurring tasks, which leads to fatigue and even maybe psychological problems in the long-term. Mostly, motivation increases with extrinsic monetary incentives, those are commonly considered short-term. On the other hand, incentive tools such as job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment and teamwork are rarely used in warehousing and logistics. There are a few projects that are focusing on solution of those problems.

Logistics, gaming and psychology are the essentials of these inter-disciplinary approaches that merge perceptions and analytical-thinking.

These implementations in logistics contain missions (e.g. order fulfillment), trophies for

completed tasks, trophies for lifetime points (e.g. levels), and trophies for specific roles (e.g. packing). Through these implementations workers are more competitive; they’re encouraged for healthy participation in the challenges and they’re motivated for higher speed of completing the job.

Motivation is an essential component for providing someone discover his/her potential skills. Gamifying a system could improve motivation and leverage the level of satisfaction among all logistics workforce.

The new functionality of the new generation warehouse management and logistics systems is to allow companies design and configure gamification scenarios and challenges to motivate and better manage logistics taskforce.