Warehouses have complex structures. Because of this, warehouses need to design and operate well. Even if you design your warehouse in the best way, it will not be the most efficient unless you operate it well. Vice versa you cannot operate your warehouse most effectively if you don’t design it well. So, the way to increase your warehouse’s efficiency is to think about how to design and operate your warehouse.
When thinking about it, sometimes the things you know about your warehouse is not enough. Most of the time you need data. You need to collect the true data, and then the important part is understanding that data. With the data you’ve collected, you can see the wrong and good things you do inside your warehouse. It shows you if you designed it well or what you can improve in your warehouse operations. They seem very simple but can be hard, and sometimes you may need help.
So, here are the five ways to improve your warehouse’s efficiency:
1) Analytics
Sometimes it’s hard to see inefficiencies. If you have your data, it becomes easier to understand where you are less efficient. But it doesn’t like you find the inefficiency and fix it for good. You need to check whenever a new item joins into your warehouse, or an item is removed from your warehouse permanently, etc. The best way to find inefficiencies is to look at your warehouse’s health check. You can see the inefficiencies in slotting and picking while visualizing your warehouse via heat maps and route diagrams. Then you can take a step and create the highest efficiencies for your warehouse operations.
2) Route Optimization
A real-time locating system (RTLS) is the best helper for you in route optimization. You may know the places of whole items in the warehouse, but if you need to pick more than five items, it means you need help to improve your efficiency. Route optimization provides you the shortest route for the hand-picking process and increases the hand-picking process’ efficiency by approximately 20%.
3) Slotting Optimization
ABC analysis puts the most frequent products in the most important place and helps you to optimize your slotting. The traditional ways do this once, but with e-commerce, the most frequent products are changing fast. So, ABC analysis should be done continuously. AI and machine learning help you in slotting optimization.
4) Route Assistant
It may take more than six months for a new employee to adapt to the warehouse. Giving employees a step-by-step route makes adaptation easier. Because the turnover rate is high in warehouses, route assistant is very important in case of efficiency. It prevents the inefficiencies because of the new employees’ adoption time.
5) Visualization
It is important to create a digital twin of your warehouse. With the digital twin, you can see where the products are, how many are they. You can also see and compare how many products were in a specific slot in the past and now. The simulation also helps you with the new employee’s adoption. The digital twin can be beneficial for new employees by showing the warehouse in 3D and explaining it one by one.
You can review our solutions that will help you increase your warehouse efficiency here.