Creating and maintaining a productive warehouse is crucial to ensuring operations continue to run smoothly. An inefficient, unproductive warehouse can cause a number of internal problems which, subsequently, will affect workflow and your customers. Not only will it frustrate your clients, but it’ll also begin to irritate your employees.
An unsatisfied workforce could lead to decreased turnover rates and low morale. In combination, this won’t be good for your business, hence why there’s so much emphasis on running a productive warehouse, continually. Fortunately, there are a number of different things you can do and tips to follow to ensure productivity throughout, and we’ll be detailing tem in this article for you.
How can I make my warehouse more productive?
Here are a few of the key things you can do to make your warehouse more productive which, in turn, will make your operations run more efficiently. Either way, your business will benefit highly if you implement the following points.
Identify any room for improvement
It’s paramount that you can see any and all opportunities to improve your operations overall. Not only will it provide you with a starting point, but it’ll also provide a solid foundation for you to start overhauling your business. Often, this will start with KPI’s, or key performance indicators that can be easily identified and recognised as needing to undergo a change.
Some of the things that might need improving when it comes to way in which your run your warehouse could include:
- Lead times
- Accuracy of each order
- The rate at which items are returned and processed
- How fast refunds are processed
- Appropriate material handling equipment to suit every application
- The number of staff you have to help
You most likely won’t see dramatic changes to your revenue overnight by changing the aforementioned things or tailoring them more to your needs. Although, over time, you’ll see a vast improvement in the way things are done and the profits you manage to make. The sole idea is to achieve strong, steady progress that continues to move in the right direction.
Keep track of where your assets are in the chain
Stock that ends up misplaced, lost or even damaged can cause businesses to lose a considerable amount of money. As well as that, it can also eat up valuable time as you work to mitigate those losses. As a result, this takes much of your workforce away from other duties throughout the warehouse, causing productivity to plummet.
Smart tags and the Internet of Things (IoTs) will help warehouse owners to curb the problems associated with lost, missing, stolen or damaged goods. It might even be that some items have been stored in the wrong place, so use the technology available to you to track where those products might have been placed in order to avoid such an issue.
If you have the budget for it, you could even install tracking technologies on moving vehicles in order to see the journey of the products you’re transporting. Although this might be quite an expensive outlay to begin with, you’ll soon reap the rewards financially further down the line, especially if it means a reduction in the amount of stock you lose.
Improve traffic flow and the speed in which operations are carried out
Identify anything in and around your warehouse that could be preventing the steady, smooth and continuous flow of traffic. Slips, trips and falls account for many accidents in the workplace, whether you work in the material handling industry or not.
Stray cords, loose tiles, cracked floors and scattered tools will all contribute to slow, potentially dangerous maneuvering throughout your warehouse and so they’ll need to be rectified to prevent injury to others.
Warehouse managers and owners should also look into how well placed the warehouse racking is and where items are stored on those shelves. Most of the time, these things will result in operations moving at a much slower rate, which also means that productivity levels will drop.
Put best-selling items in easy-to-reach places, rotate your perishable stock and group similar items together – these are just a few things you can do to try to enhance and improve efficiency throughout your warehouse, helping operations to move much faster as a result.
Make sure your material handling equipment is fit for purpose
It’s important that the machinery you have will be able to do the job as quickly and as reliably as possible. Identify what jobs need to be done and choose the best equipment for the task or application at hand. A forklift is ideal for transporting goods, whereas an order picker or a reach truck is perfect for retrieving the goods in the first place.
If your warehouse racking is particularly tall, then perhaps consider the use of scissor lift or cherry picker to make the job quicker, easier and safer for all. It’s also important that all of the equipment you have has been serviced and maintained to an excellent standard. Although, most busy warehouse owners don’t have the time to do that and that’s where long or short term forklift hire will be able to help you.
Here at Hire Forklifts, we’re able to supply our customers with affordable, reliable and transparent forklift hire services to effortlessly meet your requirements. Whether you need a machine for a day or a few years, you’ll be able to rent the material handling equipment you need to make short work of the task at hand.
One of the benefits of hiring a forklift, or any other piece of warehouse equipment, is that all of the machines we supply have been meticulously maintained and checked over by our expert team of highly-skilled engineers. No matter what it is you need the machinery for, you can rest assured that you’ll be provided with safe, high-quality equipment that you’ll always be able to rely upon.
How can Hire Forklifts help you?
Hire Forklifts have a wide range of material handling equipment available for rent. Whether you’re wanting to
hire an electric forklift,
rent a reach truck or acquire an order picker for good measure, you’ll always be able to look to us to provide you with everything you need to make sure your warehouse runs smoothly.
Whether you’d prefer long term or short term rental contracts, lasting anywhere from one day to a couple of years, we’ll be happy to talk you through your options. We can be exceptionally flexible in order to seamlessly suit both your needs and your budget. As soon as you’re finished with the machine, we’ll be able to come and pick it up and take it off your premises at a time to suit you.
We endeavour to provide our customers with an excellent, reliable service every single time, so you’ll never have to worry about being left without the equipment you need to get your work done.
If you’d like more information about our electric, LPG or diesel forklifts for hire near you, get in touch with a member of our friendly, knowledgeable team today – we’re always on hand to help, no matter what it is you require. 
