Remaining competitive as a warehouse is important. If you are not competitive, then you will notice profit margins will begin to shrink. It is important to be proactive with warehouse management to always ensure efficiency and effectiveness. Establishing a starting point and getting to grips with embracing change is essential.
• Getting Energy Usage and Costs Under Control
One of the first areas you will want to focus on when improving efficiency is energy costs. How much is it costing you to heat or light your warehouse at the moment, and are you on a competitive tariff? Energy costs and usage can be a big cost within your company, so it’s important to see if you can become more efficient with how you use energy and where you get your energy from. When a warehouse is more efficient, there are then additional funds and resources that can be plowed into other operational aspects.
• Improve Inventory Management
The inventory that you have in your warehouse must be managed to ensure efficiency. When inventory is successfully managed and even rotated,you can then reduce out-of-stocks and stock-outs. Being in control of your inventory means that you are not harboring products and goods, and most importantly, it means your customers and end-users are not kept waiting. To successfully improve inventory management, you need to look at current processes. Find out where you are taking too long to process and log inventory, and see if you can integrate any new technology to speed up the process.
• Focus on Your Employees
Your warehouse is only going to be as efficient and effective as your team members are. Even if you are embracing a large amount of technology, you are still going to find that you are relying on people for certain roles and tasks. Therefore, you must focus on giving your employees everything that they need to be efficient. This may mean you ensure they have longer breaks between working periods. Or it may mean that they have their roles and job descriptions restructured. When your employees feel valued and appreciated, you will see a difference in efficiency levels. This will then filter through to the rest of the warehouse operations and processes.
• Look at the End Result
Before you implement too many changes and improvements, it is important to always look at the end result. Look at what you want to achieve and see the best route to take. When you can see what the end result is that you would like to achieve, you have clarity and you have focus. This is then a vision that you can share with others. If this vision is not in place, you are going to struggle to get everyone to embrace new ideas and new ways of working.
Try to implement one area of change at any given time. Smooth out this area and then progress onto something different. If you try to tackle too much at once, it can be overwhelming, and you can end up with a warehouse that is poorly run (and operating below capacity).
