The pandemic has left many companies looking to tighten their belts and really take stock of where costs can be made and efficiencies improved within their operations.
Running your warehousing efficiently and cost-effectively can have a huge impact on your bottom line. Better warehousing leads to fewer issues, which leads to happier customers. Constantly delivering late or making errors will see customers heading for your competitors.
Create an optimized storage system
Online shopping has increased massively during the pandemic, as people were either required to stay at home or did not want to risk shopping and interacting with other people. This in turn has led to a much higher need for warehousing. g6The more products you house, the more you need to make sure that your SKU storage and systems are fit for service. Get your physical storage optimized by investing in or improving the layouts of your pallet rack system. You might not have the room or funds to expand the square footage of your warehouse, so being smart with the storage you have is the key.
Perfect your pick and stow routes
The majority of resources in managing a warehousing system are spent on labor costs. The warehousing staff moves around picking and packing orders. So you want this process to be done as quickly and accurately as possible.
A good warehouse management system if key here. This system will hold all product and location data and can direct your employees to the right place, quickly. The system will also work out the most efficient route through the warehouse in order to pick multiple products for an order.
Review your inventory process
Keeping the right products in your warehouse, for the shortest amount of time is the ultimate goal. Holding on to too much inventory is costing you money. Review your inventory and design a system to monitor the average time it is in the warehouse, the typical turnover rate, the ROI, and profits on each particular product.
Reduce unnecessary packaging
The amount of packaging on products today is getting silly. For environmental purposes alone, the industry should be looking at reducing this. From a warehousing perspective, this is contributing to time and space. Many items are packaged in additional material before they are sent, meaning, which is often unnecessary. Your employees spend time opening, repackaging, and disposing of unnecessary materials, which also cost you money to store and dispose of.
Invest in handheld technology
Equipping your employees with the latest in mobile tech, connected directly to your warehouse management system can bring huge benefits. You can use them to find and scan inventory, receive information on the best picking route through the warehouse, and reduce the time spent fulfilling orders.
Key takeaways
The world now shops online which means warehousing has never been more important. It’s difficult to predict just how well and how quickly the economy will recover. In order to maximize profits and reduce inefficiencies, businesses need to invest in technology that is going to help them do this. Relying on old manual processes is going to cost more money and potentially lose your customers in the long run.
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