The individuals who study warehouse efficiency have found that around 50 to 60 percent of travel time is wasted in the majority of material handling facilities. The main objective is to minimize forklift time and travel distance in particular ways that truly help prevent equipment abuse and product damage. Some of the most frequent efficiency barriers to numerous warehouses are discussed below.
New product lines are stored where there is extra room, 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 SKUs have proliferated. Order-picking and replenishment speeds are lessened due to bad lighting. The forklift fleet is very small and more round trips are required using the same machinery. Forklifts experience detours and slowdowns due to poor machine maintenance and uneven floor surfaces. Ineffective warehouse layout normally causes ineffective workflows and dead-end aisles.
If any of the mentioned issues seem familiar at your workplace, or if you know ways to be much more effective overall, there are 3 main areas to focus on:
Shipping, Receiving and Storage 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 the opposite to the desired direction or double backwards in any spots or go in many different directions, then you have determined your inefficient areas.
When you have identified your trouble spots, work to improve access to product destinations, reduce travel distances between destination and source, reduce bottleneck areas in the facility and re-vamp any lift truck and high-travel congestion places.
Cross-Docking? For objects 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 sorting and consolidation is usually done within the shipping areas. The easiest items to cross-dock are normally bar coded products with high inventory carrying expenses and predicable demands.
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