Keeping a skilled staff is hard in today’s manufacturing world, which is always changing. This is especially true when you consider that the warehouse, transportation, and energy sectors have a shocking 53% yearly change rate. Even though there have been some improvements in the job market since 2022, it is still hard to keep stores full of skilled workers.
If you’re in charge of manufacturing or distributing, your first thought might be to put a lot of money into robotic technologies like AI and self-driving robots. Without a doubt, these kinds of options can cut down on the need to hire more people or replace people who leave. While they can be very useful, they generally take a lot of money and time to put into action. The people who work in warehouses should make the most of the time they have now. Companies that make and sell goods can use their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to improve efficiency and lessen the effects of high change rates in the short term.
Companies can get a lot of benefits from working on making their warehouses more efficient. First, they can cut down on the need for extra staff. Also, if employees leave, if productivity is high enough, they might not need to be replaced. In fact, the following steps could cut down on turnover because they will make the workplace more productive, which will lower stress and make employees happier. Additionally, stores can improve the accuracy of order processing, the number of on-time deliveries, and, in the end, their profits.
Let us look at four quick and easy ways for warehouse managers to improve performance that won’t cost a lot of money:
Make the warehouse layout better
Being very careful about how you set up your warehouse’s plan can greatly increase its effectiveness. Take a look at these steps:
Ask your storage staff for ideas on how to make things better: Your pickers and other storage workers use the current methods every day and will no doubt have suggestions for how they could be improved. You should think about what they have to say, even if not every idea is good.
Set up a method for clearly marking bins, hallways, and rows that makes sense: There are big signs with letters and/or numbers that are easy to read and move in a logical way that can help pickers, especially new pickers, find exactly what they need. Some companies have made systems that work so well that they didn’t see the need to buy a warehouse tracking option.
Set aside different areas for finished goods and raw materials: We all know how crazy things were during and right after the plague. Stock was put wherever there was room for it. But (most of) the supply chain is back up and running. If you haven’t already, it’s time to clean up.
Make good use of high space and mobile shelving units: To store seasonal things, use mobile units. These can be moved out of the way and kept easily until the right time. Stackable bins can increase room without taking up more floor space.
Set up your collection based on how often you pick it up and how often you get orders: The stock that moves the fastest should be the easiest to get to. Also, if the same things are bought together a lot, put them all close to each other in the building.
One company I’ve worked with changed the plan of their warehouse based on these ideas and said that the amount of useful pallet floor space went up by 33%.
Streamline the picking process
You can make picking faster with a few easy methods, even if you don’t have a complex Warehouse Management System (WMS):
- As soon as the packing slips are created, sort them by bin location: It will take pickers less time to go back and forth across the building to fill their slips.
- As much as possible, combine multiple orders into a single pick list: If you make fewer trips, you waste less time.
- Allow suggested picks in your WMS to help with first-expire-first-out (FEFO) and other practices: This is especially helpful in the food business to keep things from going bad.
- These small changes can cut pickers’ trip time and distance by a lot, making the whole process more efficient.
Improve the technology used to scan barcodes
Some older scanners may still work, but newer mobile scanners can load pick lists in seconds instead of minutes. This upgrade, which might not seem like much, can save a lot of time for many picks and shifts. Let us say, for example, that a new bar reader loads 30 seconds faster than the one we have now. That might not seem like much, but if you multiply that by 30 lines of 20 pickers working in two shifts, you’ll save 10 hours of time every day, which is 50 hours a week, which is more than one full-time employee!
Also, newer devices often have extra features like lot tracking and picking tips that make them even more useful.
Real-time pallet tracking should be used
It can take a long time to find specific goods in warehouses with a lot of SKUs but low volume per item. You can track pallets in real time by using your ERP system and buying RFID tags or Internet of Things (IoT) monitors. This makes it easier to find items faster, better organize sales orders, and stop theft better.
Putting these four methods into action doesn’t take a lot of time or money. Most stores could make these changes in one to two months if they had strong backing from the top. That being said, high turnover in warehouses is a problem, but it’s not impossible to solve. Manufacturers and wholesalers can lessen the effects of a lack of workers by focusing on these useful and low-cost options. They can also make their business more efficient, accurate, and successful.
