The people who study warehouse efficiency have found that about 50 to 60 percent of travel time is wasted in most material handling facilities. The objective is to be able to reduce lift truck travel distance and time in certain ways that really help avoid equipment abuse and product damage. Several of the most frequent efficiency barriers to lots of warehouses are discussed below.
The new products would not always be positioned where it makes the most sense, these products are normally stored wherever there is extra room. The regularly handled things are separated due to size or to storage handling requirements. Because of increased business, SKUs or also called Stock-Keeping Units have proliferated. Replenishment and order-picking speeds are reduced due to poor lighting. The forklift fleet is too small and a lot more round trips are needed utilizing the same machine. Lift trucks face slowdowns and detours because of poor equipment maintenance and uneven floor surfaces. Ineffective warehouse design normally leads to unproductive workflows and dead-end aisles.
There are 3 main areas to concentrate on if any of the mentioned concerns seem familiar at your workplace, or if you know ways to be more efficient overall:
The layout of the shipping, receiving and storage areas: Direct the way your product flows by using a facility layout or by drawing a series of arrows. The best facilities provide a well-organized, single direction flow from receiving to shipping. If your arrows go in the opposite to the desired direction or double backwards in any spots or go in numerous different directions, then you have determined your inefficient spots.
When you have identified your trouble spots, work to improve access to product destinations, reduce travel distances between source and destination, lessen bottleneck areas within the facility and re-vamp any forklift and high-travel congestion places.
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 moved from inbound delivery almost directly to outbound shipping. Some of the consolidation and sorting is often done in the shipping areas. The simplest objects to cross-dock are typically bar coded products with high inventory carrying expenses and predicable demands.
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