The individuals who study warehouse effectiveness have found that about 50 to 60 percent of travel time is wasted in nearly all material handling facilities. The main objective is to be able to reduce lift truck travel distance and time in specific ways that help prevent damage to products and machine abuse. Several of the most common efficiency barriers to many warehouses are discussed below.
The new products would not always be positioned where it makes the most sense, these products are normally stored wherever there is extra room. The frequently handled items are separated due to storage handling requirements or to size. Due to increased business, SKUs or also called Stock-Keeping Units have proliferated. Replenishment and order-picking speeds are lessened due to bad lighting. The lift truck fleet is too small and a lot more round trips are required using the same equipment. Forklifts experience slowdowns and detours because of poor machine maintenance and uneven floor surfaces. Ineffective warehouse layout normally causes dead-end aisles and inefficient 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 are aware of ways to be more efficient overall:
The layout of the shipping, receiving and storage areas: Direct the way your product flows by using a facility layout or by drawing a series of arrows. The best facilities provide a well-organized, single direction flow from receiving to shipping. If your arrows go in numerous different directions, or double backwards in any spots or go in the opposite to the desired direction, then you have determined your inefficient areas.
After you have identified your trouble spots, work to improve access to product destinations, minimize travel distances between source and destination, lessen bottleneck places in the facility and re-vamp any lift truck and high-travel congestion areas.
Cross-Docking? For things which 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 consolidation and sorting is usually performed in the shipping areas. The simplest objects to cross-dock are usually bar coded products with high inventory carrying costs and predicable demands.
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