As a trade professional, you are always fighting a battle against time. Yes, you need to perform jobs and tasks to the highest quality possible, but all of your clients want things to be done swiftly. Therefore, you are trying to perform tasks faster, but without compromising their quality.
This leads you to an interesting situation whereby you must look for clever ways to cut down on time. But, there is one simple solution that will make you way more productive – and it doesn’t alter the quality of your work.
If you’ve already read the title, you’ll know we’re talking about a storage system. There are many types of storage systems you might need/use. Some trade professionals will have a warehouse racking system, while others will have a smaller storage system in their vans. In either case, here’s how some smart storage ideas will boost productivity.
Get quicker access to tools
If you have a good storage system in place, you will instantly have better access to tools for your jobs. Let’s say you’re working as a plumber and you visit a client’s house. They’ve got a leak, and a quick look around shows you the issue is a burst pipe. Immediately, you can hop in the back of your van and find the tools needed for the job. It stops you from wasting five or ten minutes rooting around for something.
As a result, you can fix the pipe in a matter of minutes. Your client is happy, and they’re likely to leave a positive review. This now gives you more time in the day to fit in more clients, possibly allowing you to earn even more cash!
Gather all the right materials right away
Similarly, let’s say you have a warehouse or other business premises where you keep a lot of materials for jobs. You don’t want to carry them all with you in your van as it weighs the vehicle down and you won’t use everything for every job. As such, time is wasted before you even attend a job as you’re looking through your warehouse for all the right materials and equipment to bring.
Again, having a better storage system will make life easier. You instantly know where to go to get things like paint or a specific type of cladding. It allows you to prepare for jobs faster, so you can get there quicker, keeping your customers happy.
Store off-site
For some items at least, you might find that the best solution is actually to just store them off-site. This is obviously best applicable to anything that you don’t need to have access to all the time, and it’s likely that you are going to want to think about this if you are keen on making your storage as good as possible.
To do this, you need to find some storage solutions in your area and make sure that they are safe and accessible. Then it’s just a case of working out what you can store there and what you need on-site. Do it right, and it will make a huge difference
Speed up maintenance
Productivity doesn’t just revolve around the jobs you do. As a trade professional, you need to maintain all of your tools and equipment to ensure they continue to operate correctly. If you don’t have a good storage system, this is harder to do. You waste time looking for tools and might not even find the ones you need to maintain. Thus, you have to do on-the-job maintenance when you discover that you forgot to clean a particular tool.
Storage solutions will let you easily see your tools and pick out which ones have been maintained or not. Therefore, you never have to worry about wasting time cleaning things while performing a job.
In short, you need to focus on developing a great storage system as a trade professional. The easier it is for you to find your tools/equipment/materials, the more efficient and productive you can be at your jobs.
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