The individuals who study warehouse efficiency have found that approximately 50 to 60 percent of travel time is wasted in most material handling facilities. The goal is to be able to minimize lift truck time and travel distance in particular ways that truly help avoid equipment abuse and product damage. Several of the most frequent efficiency barriers to numerous warehouses are discussed below.
New product lines are stored wherever there is extra room, not necessarily where it makes the most sense. Frequently handled things are separated due to storage handling requirements or to size. Because of increased business, SKUs or Stock-Keeping Units have proliferated. Replenishment and order-picking speeds are lessened because of bad lighting. The lift truck fleet is too small and a lot more round trips are required using the same machine. Lift trucks experience detours and slowdowns because of poor equipment maintenance and uneven floor surfaces. Inefficient warehouse design usually causes dead-end aisles and unproductive workflows.
There are 3 main areas to concentrate on if any of the mentioned issues seem familiar at your place of work, or if you know ways to be much more efficient overall:
The layout of the storage, shipping, and receiving areas: Direct the way your product flows by using a facility layout or by drawing a series of arrows. The best facilities provide 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 numerous different directions, then you have determined your inefficient spots.
After you have identified your trouble spots, work to improve access to product destinations, reduce travel distances between source and destination, decrease bottleneck areas within the facility and re-vamp any forklift and high-travel congestion areas.
What is cross-docking? Consider cross-docking options for items that rapidly 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 consolidation and sorting is often performed in the shipping areas. The simplest things to cross-dock are usually bar coded products with predicable demands and high inventory carrying costs.
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