The people who study warehouse effectiveness have found that about 50 to 60 percent of travel time is wasted in the majority of material handling facilities. The objective is to minimize lift truck time and travel distance in certain ways that help prevent machine abuse and product damage. Several of the most frequent efficiency barriers to a lot of warehouses are discussed below.
The new products would not always be placed where it makes the most sense, these products are normally stored where there is extra room. The regularly handled things are separated due to storage handling requirements or to size. Due to increased business, SKUs or also called Stock-Keeping Units have proliferated. Order-picking and replenishment speeds are reduced due to bad lighting. The forklift fleet is very small and more round trips are required utilizing the same machinery. Forklifts experience detours and slowdowns due to poor machine maintenance and uneven floor surfaces. Inefficient warehouse layout normally causes inefficient workflows and dead-end aisles.
If any of the mentioned concerns seem familiar at your workplace, or if you are aware of ways to be more efficient overall, there are 3 main areas to concentrate on:
Shipping, Receiving and Storage Layout: Utilize a facility layout and draw a series of arrows reflecting the way your product flows. The best facilities offer a well-organized, single direction flow from receiving to shipping. If your arrows go in numerous different directions, or double backwards in any spots or go in the opposite to the desired direction, then you have determined your inefficient spots.
Work to improve access to product destinations, lessen travel distances between source and destination, decrease bottleneck areas when you have identified your trouble spots. This could be done by re-vamping any forklift and high-travel congestion areas.
Cross-Docking? For items that rapidly move throughout your facility, consider cross-docking options. The cross-docked inventory is not stored inside the warehouse. It is transported from inbound delivery almost directly to outbound shipping. Some of the consolidation and sorting is usually performed in the shipping areas. The easiest objects to cross-dock are usually bar coded products with high inventory carrying expenses and predicable demands.
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