The people who study warehouse efficiency have found that roughly 50 to 60 percent of travel time is wasted in the majority of material handling facilities. The main objective is to be able to reduce lift truck travel distance and time in certain ways that help prevent damage to products and equipment abuse. Several of the most common efficiency barriers to many warehouses are discussed below.
New product lines are stored wherever there is extra room, not necessarily where it makes the most sense. Frequently handled objects are separated due to storage handling requirements or to size. Due to increased business, SKUs or also called Stock-Keeping Units have proliferated. Replenishment and order-picking speeds are lessened because of poor lighting. The forklift fleet is too small and a lot more round trips are needed utilizing the same machinery. Lift trucks face detours and slowdowns due to poor equipment maintenance and uneven floor surfaces. Inefficient warehouse design usually leads to dead-end aisles and unproductive workflows.
If any of the above problems seem familiar at your place of work, or if you are aware of ways to be much more effective overall, there are 3 main areas to focus on:
The layout of the storage, shipping, and receiving areas: Direct the way your product flows by utilizing a facility layout or by drawing a series of arrows. The best facilities provide a single direction, well-organized flow from receiving to shipping. If your arrows go in many different directions, or double backwards in any spots or go in the opposite to the desired direction, then you have determined your inefficient spots.
When you have identified your trouble spots, work to improve access to product destinations, minimize travel distances between destination and source, decrease bottleneck areas within the facility and re-vamp any forklift and high-travel congestion areas.
Cross-Docking? For things that quickly 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 usually performed within the shipping areas. The simplest objects to cross-dock are typically bar coded products with high inventory carrying costs and predicable demands.
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