Individuals who have studied efficiency in the warehouse has found that 50 to 60 percent of travel time is wasted in material handling facilities. The objective is to be able to reduce lift truck time and travel distance in certain ways that truly help avoid product damage and equipment abuse. Some of the most frequent efficiency barriers to many warehouses are discussed below.
The new products will not always be placed where it makes the most sense, these products are usually stored where there is extra space. The frequently handled items are separated due to storage handling requirements or to size. Because of increased business, SKUs or Stock-Keeping Units 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 equipment. Forklifts face detours and slowdowns because of poor equipment maintenance and uneven floor surfaces. Inefficient warehouse design normally leads to dead-end aisles and ineffective workflows.
If any of the above concerns seem familiar at your workplace, or if you are aware of ways to be more effective overall, there are 3 main areas to concentrate 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 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 spots.
After you have identified your trouble spots, work to improve access to product destinations, lessen travel distances between source and destination, reduce bottleneck areas within the facility and re-vamp any lift truck and high-travel congestion places.
What is cross-docking? Consider cross-docking options for items which quickly move throughout your facility. The cross-docked inventory is not stored in the warehouse. It is transported from inbound delivery almost directly to outbound shipping. Some of the sorting and consolidation is often done in the shipping areas. The simplest things to cross-dock are typically bar coded products with high inventory carrying costs and predicable demands.
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