If you are operating your warehouse smoothly and efficiently, you are saving a great deal of money for your business. Warehouses, in general, always have a great deal of room for growth and studies have shown that, within the UK, over 3,000 hours annually are lost due to unproductive working habits and environments. All businesses experience some lost hours, but these numbers are well beyond the scope of reasonable. You need to evaluate the overall work ethics and environment within your warehouse in order to get your warehouse moving forward and stop losing time. If you have weak spots within your business and are not saving money, here are some top solutions you should take into account:
Warehouses, in this day and age, are typically super clean, very modern spacious rooms. These rooms prevent contamination, decay and easy access to move items out. One of the very best examples is creating an innovative inventory management system which is implemented by Amazon! They run one of the most efficient, inventory management operations anywhere in the world. Take some examples from them and see how to implement their ideas into your warehouse.
Each loss you experience should be totally unacceptable, therefore, you must analyse where you are experiencing loss and put together a system that not only makes sense but also works. There are various warehouse management systems that are available. Do some good research and come up with a system that is a custom fit for your industry.
Ergonomic equipment
Offering ergonomic equipment is a very small investment and will help to ensure you are taking care of your employees. This goes a long way in improving worker productivity. Your workers will be happy and alert and this will reduce injuries and liabilities by keeping them healthy. Ergonomic solutions should be measured carefully, including ROI on certain items. Ergonomic mats, adjustable tables will not only boost your employees morale but will offer a higher productivity from day one.
Organisation
Structure within your warehouse is a must. Japan has developed a structure called 5S. Check out the following items that 5S encourages and promotes employee involvement in the business’ bottom line:
- Stabilise
- Standardise
- Sustain
- Sort
- Shine
Implementing a 5S system has shown great success within the food processing and manufacturing industries. This system offers efficiency and can be implemented within any industry or situation.
How’s your pallet racking system?
Obviously pallet racks are an absolute must for a warehouse. They save an enormous amount of horizontal space and allows people and machines to move through efficiently. Using a good strategy plan, your rack system will give you great returns on investment.
Warehouse safety education
The best investment in your warehouse is safety education. You obviously have a set standard safety procedure but most of these procedures are actually insufficient. OSHA has a public list of infractions and fines that are issued for poor techniques in safety. Believe it or not, it is not uncommon for a warehouse to receive a six digit fine as a precaution! Do you want to wait for a incident to occur when it’s too late to do anything else?
We have a number of safety posts on our blog that we recommend you take a look at. Here is a list of just a few to get you started:
- The leading warehouse hazards
- Warehouse safety checklist
- Warehouse guardrails
- Only you can prevent warehouse fires
- Warehouse electrocution prevention
There are many warehouse solutions that are highly recommended to curb harmful incidents and improve your overall investments. Providing good quality changes within your warehouse will be one of the best actions you can possible take. Look into studies of other warehouse using these technologies and discover how you too can improve using these steps.
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