Can your warehouse be more efficient?

by Claire J. Content Manager

Running an efficient warehouse is crucial for successfully meeting deadlines, keeping costs down and preventing waste and accidents. With increasing costs and rising customer expectations, developing ways to increase efficiency, and cost-effectivity is important in today’s business world. Here’s a few things you can try out to improve your warehouse’s efficiency.

Manage Inbound & Out Shipping

Inbound and outbound shipping has the ability to greatly impact your profit margins so it’s something you definitely want to focus on. Often, it’s best to engage with a specialised consultant who can identify the areas where spending can be reduced. Knowing where and how to reduce investment, and then where to strategically reinvest these savings is key to warehouse efficiency. It’s also worth noting that having control over your whole logistics operation is ongoing and key to keeping costs down.

Incentive Pay

Incentive pay is hardly a new idea, but it’s rare that it is implemented properly, in a profit-focused way. A large number of workflows within warehouses are undoubtedly pick and pack, which work perfectly with strategic incentive pay.

When thinking about incentive pay, it’s important that you target areas that can be improved upon, and not areas where you are already getting healthy amount of productivity. There’s no point paying for productivity that you are already getting, this is the opposite of efficient! Find the areas that can be done faster, or at greater volume and develop a strategic incentive payment plan.

Utilise Specialised Equipment

One of the most effective ways to improve efficiency in a warehouse is to reduce the risk of accidents and injury. Using proper storage equipment when it comes to dangerous chemicals and hazardous equipment is key in preventing accidents and in turn, improving productivity.

Dangerous goods storage specialists, like Storemasta, can provide risk assessments and all the necessary storage equipment to safely store your dangerous goods, reducing risk and improving productivity.

Simplification

As warehouses grow and mature, it’s common for more and more tasks to be layered upon one another. As new workflows are added on top of new ones, it’s easy for your employees to become overworked and so less productive. Take a look at all the processes employees have to work through and consider what is and isn’t necessary, paying extra attention to anything that slows down or bottle-neck processes.

Not only does it impact productivity, but having a congested workflow also takes its toll on employee morale. In the workplace more than 75% of those working in the US believe they aren’t being given the best chance at working to optimal efficiency due to using outdated workflows and technology.

Measure & Optimise

To improve, you must first know what is happening. Without a clear idea of how your workflow is running, you can’t expect to find ways to increase efficiency. You should regularly be receiving feedback and measuring all sections of your warehouse.

It can help to get granular with your approach, looking at how much each package or shipment costs, how much return shipments cost and how much certain errors cost. From there, you can work backwards and determine how to keep costs low in each area. Again, this should be an ongoing process as you continuously aim to optimise your warehouse.

Software as a Service

Software automation is here and in full force. Without utilising software as a service to your advantage, you are losing huge amounts of efficiency. SaaS systems are able to accurately perform cost analyses much more efficient than a team of strategic analyses.

The faster you can identify warehouse process that can be reformed into more productive and effective processes, the more efficient your warehouse will be overall.

Continuous Improvements

The best way to stay efficient and ahead of the competition is to create a culture of constant improvements. The main reason for warehouses becoming unproductive is the improvement process taking a back seat. Operation methods can often become outdated and unoptimised, and without constant efforts to improve, a warehouse can begin to struggle. Warehouses must strive to keep up with the fast changing world of business and customer expectations.