Retailers often think wholesalers, warehouses and mail-order companies have it easy. No need for fancy displays, expensive high street premises, constant manning of tills or vigilance for shoplifters. In actuality, stock management, order picking, packaging and deliveries turn out to be far more demanding than anything equivalent in retail. Many businesses rely on a warehouse – from your local supermarket to industries like this rubber moulding company www.meadex.co.uk/rubber-moulding/ so it is important that a warehouse runs smoothly.
Picking is the most expensive routine in any warehouse, and failure to do it well alienates customers – costing even more. Embracing better methodologies is as valuable as new technology for any storage-intensive enterprise. Smarter strategies make a big difference.
Storage Strategies
Slotting is part science and part art, but it is surprising how many businesses don’t attempt to use it in any form. Just relocating your top sellers to a rapid-access zone will make a huge difference. Review which lines to keep there on a seasonal basis. If you use boltless shelving, you can easily adjust shelves for changing product lines.
If you can afford to automate, then asset tracking software based on barcodes or RFID can analyse which lines are moving fastest and then calculate the ideal slot to minimise movement between stock location and dispatch bay.
Shelving Strategies
Your shelving choices dictate how easy it will be for you to experiment with new ideas and adapt to changing requirements. A professional supplier has the industry experience to provide you with good advice about the kind your business needs. Will also need to think about any machinery that you may need to move the pallets of items to reach the higher shelves.
Inventory Strategies
Pickers spend half their time walking, and that’s a major overhead. Mechanical conveying can reduce that considerably. Your system doesn’t necessarily need to be powered or computer automated. Ordinary rollers are often sufficient to shunt goods in batches from picker zones to packer zones. Conveyors work especially well with first-in, first-out systems.
Picker strategies
Fatigued pickers make mistakes. When they travel less to fulfil orders they are not only faster but more accurate. One alternative is to make each picker responsible only for goods within a single zone. The order then moves from zone to zone instead of the picker.
In a variation called wave-picking the order goes simultaneously to every zone but each picker remains responsible within only one.
Batch picking is another alternative. Pickers still move across the warehouse but collect goods for several orders at once, reducing trips overall.