Following on from our five ideas for improved warehouse efficiency, here are five more fantastic ways to improve the workings of your warehouse.
1. Fewer delivery box sizes
It may appear to make more economic sense to always use the smallest delivery box you can, but the time spent by staff assessing which box is best and picking that box could be dramatically reduced by just having two or three options. Whether this is a viable idea will depend, of course, on what goods you despatch from your warehouse, but for many companies a small box for most products and a large one for bulkier items is all it really needs.
2. Cleaning programme
Cleaning the warehouse is a very important job and needs to be done regularly to keep it safe and user friendly or the staff and the products you store. Depending on the size of the warehouse and the amount of staff you have you may not be able to assign enough staff on to the cleaning rota. If you are finding this is a problem you could contact a Commercial cleaning Gloucester company to do this for you for instance http://intocleaning.co.uk/. They could come as a little or often as you need and have trained staff who know what products to use to get the job done.
3. Additional technological support
We looked in the past blog about using software that sequences orders, but there’s even more (often older) technology that can really help. Bar codes, for instance, have been around for decades and make a great deal of difference, as they can track orders without anyone having to manually enter details. Make sure you know what your technological options are. Fund additional technology by making savings elsewhere, such as buying used pallet racking.
- Thinking about automation
Have a look at your warehouse – how much time is spent by pickers walking to and from shelves? Consider an automated transit system such as a conveyor belt, which can shave a lot of time from the picking process.5. Wheelhouse zones
Save even more time and effort by placing your highest selling SKUs at waist to shoulder height, known in the industry as the ‘wheelhouse’ zone. Not only does this simply make life easier for pickers, but it can also reduce general injuries and repetitive strain injuries.So there you have it, five more ways to improve the efficiency of your workplace and make it a safer and more rewarding place to work, and also somewhere that gets more products out quicker.
