Warehouse Dispatch

Your budget this year is even tighter than last year's was. Your bosses are expecting you to have the warehouse performing at peak efficiency, using the workers and equipment you already have. Can this actually be done?

Complacency is an enemy of warehouse efficiency. It is easy to let your warehouse operations and layout remain the same and just adjust your processes to accommodate for existing issues. After all, there are many other things to keep you busy on a given day, and everything seems to work out okay in the long run, so why mess with it?

Is your warehouse involved in the ongoing fight between clipboards and mobile devices? There are battle lines drawn between those who refuse to give up their coveted clipboards and those who want to scrap the paper and use mobile devices instead. It is important to understand why this battle is going on and which side should win.

Running a warehouse isn’t a simple task. Inventory must be accurately stored and easily located, and orders must be correctly filled and shipped quickly. Additionally, warehouse operators must optimize their workflow and prevent mistakes from being made.

Product moves in and out of your warehouse daily, much like a choreographed dance. If just one part of the dance is not well-managed, the flow of the entire piece is interrupted. Putaway is a critical part of the dance in your warehouse space. When errors occur in the putaway process, all warehouse processes suffer as a result.

How "real-time" is the data you use to manage your warehouse?

Not sure? Consider these questions to find out:

• Is your inventory sitting around collecting dust?
• Are you picking with pick-lists and paper?
• Do you manually update your database every time a change is made?
• Is it unclear who is doing their job efficiently and who is slacking off?
• Are the changes made to your processes usually only initiated once a crisis has occurred?

Keeping your warehouse inventory organized is essential for effective, efficient operations. It makes receiving, put away, picking, and shipping easier and smoother. However, without regular maintenance, no effort you put towards organizing your warehouse is going to have any long lasting effect.

Improving warehouse operations while reducing costs is a goal for many businesses. However, with up to 70 percent of the cost of warehouse operations going towards labor, that goal can be difficult to achieve. How do you raise productivity while lowering your costs? The answer is warehouse automation software.

In an ideal world, each of the products you carry in your warehouse would be stored in a single, consistent, known location. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as an ideal world. Reality usually sees the same product kept on multiple shelves, in multiple locations, in different buildings, or even in different geographic locations. Trying to track the multiple locations for all your products can be a nightmare without the help of a warehouse management software.

Is your warehouse space quickly filling up? Are you struggling to find places to put the extra items arriving in your receiving department?

Before you go looking for more warehouse space, why not look for more space in your current warehouse? Look up at the top of your current warehouse shelving. How much space is available between your ceiling and the top of the shelves? If you have open air up there, you have additional warehouse space available in your current location.