The people who study warehouse efficiency have found that approximately 50 to 60 percent of travel time is wasted in the majority of material handling facilities. The main objective is to reduce lift truck time and travel distance in particular ways that help prevent machine abuse and product damage. Some of the most common efficiency barriers to many warehouses are discussed below.
New product lines are stored where there is extra space, not necessarily where it makes the most sense. Frequently handled things are separated due to size or to storage handling requirements. Because of increased business, Stock-Keeping Units or also called SKUs have proliferated. Order-picking and replenishment speeds are lessened because of poor lighting. The forklift fleet is too small and a lot more round trips are needed using the same machinery. Forklifts experience detours and slowdowns because of uneven floor surfaces and poor equipment maintenance. Ineffective warehouse design normally causes ineffective workflows and dead-end aisles.
If any of the mentioned issues seem familiar at your workplace, or if you are aware of ways to be more efficient overall, there are 3 main areas to concentrate on:
Storage, Shipping and Receiving Layout: Utilize a facility layout and draw a series of arrows that reflect the way your product flows. The best facilities offer a single direction, well-organized flow from receiving to shipping. If your arrows go in numerous different directions, or go in the opposite to the desired direction or double backwards in any spots, then you have determined your inefficient spots.
Work to improve access to product destinations, minimize travel distances between destination and source, reduce bottleneck areas once you have identified your trouble spots. This could be done by re-vamping any lift truck 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 in the warehouse. It is moved from inbound delivery almost directly to outbound shipping. Some of the consolidation and sorting is often performed in the shipping areas. The easiest items to cross-dock are usually bar coded products with high inventory carrying expenses and predicable demands.
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