Warehouse managers have always faced new challenges to bring more productivity and efficiency across their storage and warehousing businesses. Here are a quick few points they can use to manage their multiple concerns through simple hacks through which they can trigger better performance, efficiency and manage expense cost at different levels. These hacks will make your warehouse safer and cheaper to maintain.
1. Avoid wasting time to search inventory locations
Warehouses can apply simple automation for internal locations for each product rather than depending on expensive software. Fix a free barcode on each pallet whenever a product enters the warehouse; scan the assigned barcode fixed on the pallet, enter all items on the pallets in the form on your phone, and then, enter the location of the pallet in the warehouse. When the item is called for dispatch, you can check the location of the products on your phone and pick it up. When the products are dispatched, scan the barcode and enter the dispatch details and location again. This could be the most economical way to manage your warehouse inventories. You can also check your inventory in the warehouse at any time. Simple hacks for your small and medium warehouse automation.
2. Safety of manpower working in the warehouse
This is a major concern for every warehouse manager. The biggest concern in his mind is to keep products at a height of less than 40 feet or below, as it is unsafe for them to manage it at such heights. If the pallet breaks in between, products can fall leading to labour accidents or breakage of materials which could be highly hazardous in case of inflammable or such high-risk materials. Instead of using just base pallets, warehouses should start using 3 side close pallets. This will help ensure the safety of people and products at all times.
3. Lack of Space
One of the highest investments in warehouse management is space. Businesses try to maximise the utilization of the space they have. Every single square inch of the warehouse space needs to be used for storage. Go for stackable pallets and foldable pallets which can be stacked on each other once not in use. 4 sided metal pallets give you provision to stack on one other and even fold when not in use. Go for a forklift which has a small turning radius or rack to rack distance will be very high to navigate in less time.
4. Pallet Breakage
Wooden pallets break due to load and are not reliable for all-weather situations as they contain moisture. This may lead to deflection (change of shape) of pallets from fatigue for long hours/month of storage. Plastic pallets add to the carbon footprint in nature due to the processes they take to be created and recycled. Best way to use pallets is to go for metal engineered pallets, which have much more strength than wooden and plastic pallets.
5. Expiration of products stored in the warehouse
Maintain a proper First In First Out (FIFO) system of products. One of the biggest worries for warehouse managers is maintaining FIFO in the warehouse. This is of utmost importance in the case of storage of food and beverages, as well as manufactured electronics as the date of manufacturing plays a very important role. Due to new designs and launches coming up regularly, a simple barcode implementation on the pallet can easily solve this problem. Whenever you scan a barcode of incoming material, the timestamp is created automatically, and when you have to dispatch, you can pick the earliest arrived material in the warehouse from the barcode response datasheet. To make it more effective, you can have colour-coded tags. Colour coding on pallets based on the month they arrive will help managers to search out old material lying around during the inspection. Also, the tags are counted regularly. For example, in June, if you don’t have your March tags back in your stack, it is an auto alarm for you.
These were a few quick strategies which you can deploy without costing a fortune while automating the warehouse processes in your small and medium warehouses at the same time.
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