The individuals 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 minimize forklift time and travel distance in certain ways which truly help avoid equipment abuse and damage to products. Some of the most frequent efficiency barriers to a lot of warehouses are discussed below.
New product lines are stored wherever there is extra space, not necessarily where it makes the most sense. Frequently handled objects are separated due to size or to storage handling requirements. Because of increased business, Stock-Keeping Units or SKUs have proliferated. Replenishment and order-picking speeds are reduced because of poor lighting. The forklift fleet is too small and more round trips are needed utilizing the same machinery. Lift trucks face slowdowns and detours because of uneven floor surfaces and poor machine maintenance. Inefficient warehouse design normally leads to dead-end aisles and inefficient workflows.
There are 3 main areas to focus on if any of the above problems seem familiar at your place of work, or if you are aware of ways to be more efficient overall:
Shipping, Receiving and Storage Layout: Use 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 many different directions, or go in the opposite to the desired direction or double backwards in any spots, then you have determined your inefficient areas.
Work to improve access to product destinations, lessen travel distances between source and destination, lessen bottleneck areas when you have identified your trouble spots. This can be done by re-vamping any forklift and high-travel congestion places.
Cross-Docking? For objects that quickly move throughout your facility, consider cross-docking options. The cross-docked inventory is not stored in the warehouse. It is transported from inbound delivery almost directly to outbound shipping. Some of the consolidation and sorting is normally done within the shipping areas. The simplest items to cross-dock are normally bar coded products with high inventory carrying costs and predicable demands.
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