The individuals who study warehouse efficiency have found that about 50 to 60 percent of travel time is wasted in the majority of material handling facilities. The main objective is to reduce lift truck travel distance and time in specific ways that help prevent equipment abuse and product damage. Some of the most common efficiency barriers to a lot of warehouses are discussed below.
The new products will not always be placed where it makes the most sense, these products are normally stored wherever there is extra space. The regularly handled items are separated due to size or to storage handling requirements. Due to increased business, SKUs or also called Stock-Keeping Units have proliferated. Replenishment and order-picking speeds are lessened due to bad lighting. The forklift fleet is very small and a lot more round trips are required using the same machinery. Forklifts face detours and slowdowns due to uneven floor surfaces and poor equipment maintenance. Inefficient warehouse layout normally causes unproductive workflows and dead-end aisles.
If any of the above issues seem familiar at your workplace, or if you know ways to be much more efficient overall, there are 3 main areas to concentrate on:
The layout of the shipping, receiving and storage areas: Direct the way your product flows by utilizing a facility layout or by drawing a series of arrows. The best facilities offer a well-organized, single direction flow from receiving to shipping. If your arrows double backwards in any spots or go in the opposite to the desired direction 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, minimize travel distances between source and destination, lessen bottleneck places within the facility and re-vamp any lift truck and high-travel congestion areas.
Cross-Docking? For objects that rapidly move throughout your facility, consider cross-docking options. The cross-docked inventory is not stored in the warehouse. It is moved from inbound delivery almost directly to outbound shipping. Some of the sorting and consolidation is normally performed within the shipping areas. The easiest things to cross-dock are typically bar coded products with predicable demands and high inventory carrying costs.
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