Individuals who have studied effectiveness in the warehouse has found that 50 to 60 percent of travel time is wasted in material handling facilities. The goal is to reduce lift truck travel distance and time in specific ways which truly help avoid machine abuse and damage to products. Several of the most common efficiency barriers to lots of warehouses are discussed below.
The new products would not always be positioned where it makes the most sense, these products are usually stored wherever there is extra room. The regularly handled items are separated due to storage handling requirements or to size. Due to increased business, Stock-Keeping Units or SKUs have proliferated. Replenishment and order-picking speeds are reduced because of bad lighting. The forklift fleet is very small and a lot more round trips are required utilizing the same equipment. Forklifts experience slowdowns and detours due to uneven floor surfaces and poor equipment maintenance. Ineffective warehouse design normally leads to dead-end aisles and inefficient workflows.
There are 3 main areas to concentrate on if any of the mentioned concerns seem familiar at your workplace, or if you know 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 offer a single direction, well-organized flow from receiving to shipping. If your arrows double backwards in any spots or go in the opposite to the desired direction or go in many different directions, then you have determined your inefficient spots.
Work to improve access to product destinations, lessen travel distances between destination and source, reduce bottleneck places once you have identified your trouble spots. This can be done by re-vamping any forklift and high-travel congestion areas.
What is cross-docking? Consider cross-docking options for items which rapidly move throughout your facility. The cross-docked inventory is not stored inside the warehouse. It is transported from inbound delivery almost directly to outbound shipping. Some of the consolidation and sorting is usually performed within the shipping areas. The easiest things to cross-dock are normally bar coded products with high inventory carrying expenses and predicable demands.
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