While assessing the efficiency of the warehouse It might be not right to rely only on the facts that your shelves are stocked properly and customers are getting their desired products on time. It is not possible to claim 100 percent success based on these items only. You would be amazed to know how a few adjustments in your exciting strategy can assist in making a positive impact on your business’s bottom line.
An efficient warehouse is not just about providing the customers with their products timely at their doorstep and having everything rightly placed. Instead, it is about maximizing productivity to strengthen the customer experience, shape a better working environment, and save excessive costs. Here are a few key tips that can help in improving the warehouse efficiency which can yield better results.
1. Optimize Warehouse Layout
Warehouses that depict the best efficiency are the ones that have good layouts. The lack of the right procedure and warehouse layout can make the handling of a well-planned warehouse tough. However, the initial step is to get the foundation in the right place with a good layout.
A good warehouse design must solve common operation challenges such as lost inventory, lengthy picking times, receiving and shipping bottlenecks, and unsafe storage practices. Well, with a well-formulated plan in place, you can address all the challenges. To streamline the warehouse operations use industrial drilling techniques for installing racks and shelving systems.
2. Improve Warehouse Storage
The warehouse is considered out of space when it has used 85 percent of its total capacity. Not all warehouses are optimized to the extent that they utilize the space correctly. Some warehouses get congested even when their half capacity has been used. There are a variety of factors that can easily make your warehouse run out of space.
Those factors involve poor inventory control procedures, a bunch of hot-selling items that demand more space, and outdated inventory that is hogging useful shelf space. However, you can utilize some of the ways like utilizing vertical spaces, narrowing aisles, changing storage mediums, and getting temporary storage to mention a few.
3. Leverage Warehouse Technology
In today’s world, it has become mandatory to manage and take advantage of diverse warehouse technologies. Use forklift for better material handling and achieving efficiency. Have a warehouse management system in place that can assist you in managing your inventory, automating accounting and scheduling, and giving you real-time data about your business.
A lot of warehouses are now using RFID technology for tracking purposes. This technology allows the warehouse to keep track of a single item or even pallet from a shipping source up to the warehouse and then back out the door to the customer.
4. Address Reverse Logistics
Not all products which are dispatched to the customers get delivered. A lot of times many items come back in different forms like returns, recalls, or end-of-life programs. However, procedures referred to as reverse logistics can be used. This process can create bottlenecks in a warehouse if not managed properly but adds value to a business when given priority. Handle the customers contacting you to return effectively, prepare a separate rack for returned items and inspect them.