About

Hi, I'm Jalvin Bay. I've spent around 13 years working hands-on in manufacturing and logistics: running and improving warehouse and transport operations, setting up and managing 3PL partnerships, and leading continuous improvement programmes across APAC.

I'm a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and much of my work has been helping operations teams see waste, fix the process behind it, and make the improvement stick. I've worked across 3PL, agriculture, pharmaceutical and FMCG environments, including regional roles and time on the ground in Indonesia. I'm based in Singapore.

Why The Lean Depot exists

Most writing on supply chain is either academic theory or vendor marketing. Very little of it is written by people who have stood on a warehouse floor at 6am working out why the trucks are late. Even less of it reflects how operations actually run in Asia.

The Lean Depot is my attempt to fill that gap: practical Lean for warehouse, transport and 3PL operations in Asia, from the factory gate to the customer.

What you'll find here

  • Lean in logistics: how tools proven on the factory floor work in warehouses and transport.
  • Warehousing: slotting, picking, dock flow, layout and the metrics that matter.
  • Transport and last mile: delivery density, failed deliveries and cost per drop.
  • 3PL and contracts: pricing models, tenders, service levels and managing the relationship.
  • Systems and tools: what to look for in warehouse and transport software, plus practical templates.

Who it's for

Warehouse and logistics managers, supervisors, continuous improvement practitioners, and anyone responsible for choosing or managing a 3PL. If you'd rather have a checklist you can use on Monday than another framework, you're in the right place.

A note on independence

Everything here reflects my own views and experience, not those of any current or past employer. Examples are generalised and never use confidential information. Where I recommend a product or service and may earn a referral fee, I'll say so clearly.

Get in touch

Questions, topic ideas or a problem you're wrestling with on your own floor? Email me at theleandepotblog@gmail.com. I read every message.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brief history of Lean

Image
Lean is usually told as a Japanese success story. The real history is older, more international and more useful to anyone running a warehouse today. Ask most people where Lean comes from and you'll hear one word: Toyota. That's true, but it's only the last chapter. The ideas at the heart of Lean, such as flow, standard work, building quality in and producing only what's needed, have been rediscovered again and again over two thousand years. Toyota's achievement was to borrow the best of them, add a few of its own, and weave them into one system that worked. Knowing that history isn't just trivia. It explains why Lean works, why copying the tools rarely does, and what a logistics operation in Asia can take from it today. How Lean conquered the world For most of the 20th century, the West saw Japanese manufacturing as cheap imitation. That changed in the 1970s and 1980s. When the 1973 oil crisis hit, Toyota is widely credited with recovering faster tha...
Read more