Warehouse managers must do everything in their power to maintain high productivity levels and avoid delays within the wider supply chain. There are many reasons for productivity to dip including disgruntled workers and inefficient operations causing bottlenecks. Below we’re going to discuss strategies for breaking bottlenecks and boosting warehouse productivity.
Re-Working the Layout
A warehouse needs to be laid out properly to facilitate a smooth workflow. However, it’s one of the most common causes of warehouse bottlenecks. There’s no right and wrong answer to warehouse layout, but it should keep workers safe and facilitate easy operations. To identify a layout-induced bottleneck, carefully assess the receiving, stocking, and picking areas of your warehouse to see if there are any delays.
As well as making sure employees remain safe, you need to find ways to allow each department to get on with their work without disturbing other team members.
Providing Quality Equipment
A warehouse couldn’t function without a series of equipment, which is why it’s important to make sure they’re suitable and well maintained. For example, if you’ve got a forklift but it’s missing attachments that may make life easier for your staff, you should make an investment to boost productivity. You can shop an entire range of forklift attachments from Rightline by following the link.
Create a Logical Stocking Code
When an order is accepted with missing/damaged items or it has incomplete documentation attached, it will cost money and cause issues in the warehouse – like items getting lost or orders failing to be fulfilled. To avoid these issues, it’s important to spend time putting together a logical stocking system. In particular, you can use a labeling color-coded labeling system pairing different types of parts with their storage location.
Product Organization
The first potential for a warehouse bottleneck is poor organization, which starts with receiving items and storing them. Typically, the stock is arranged with popular items easy to access and others arranged in a logical order. If proper warehouse organization doesn’t happen, the warehouse will soon slip into chaos.
To make sure the warehouse is organized at all times, you’ll have to carry out training sessions to bring everyone up to speed on policies. As well as this, warehouses need efficient systems to accept stock and pick products. If these systems aren’t good enough, organization will be an impossible feat.
Boost Logistical Automation
Technology has revolutionized the supply chain industry, with plenty of automation tools allowing warehouse managers to boost productivity. For example, you can have barcode tracking systems installed to save time because there would be zero need to print packaging slips and other relevant documentation.
Improve Quality Assurance
Even if every item in an order is present, it needs a second pair of eyes to assess its quality. Your quality assurance method will include a series of checklist points to answer, and each product must pass for it to make it onto the correct shelf.
Warehouse productivity is improved by removing operational issues causing bottlenecks. Although these solutions don’t solve all potential bottlenecks, it’s a good place to start.
