10 Strategies To Optimize Warehouse Operations

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Warehouse Operations
The economic times has impacted on every aspect of business, including warehousing and
distribution. Warehouses are looking to reduce operating expenses but still need to maximize the
resources. Other warehouse management challenges which af f ect the operation will include:
Maintaining vendor relationships
Improving inventory controls
Controlling operational costs
Satisf ying increasingly demanding customers
When looking to optimize your warehousing and distribution operations, you want proven
solutions that are aimed to eliminate non-value added processes. Determine what your f ocus is,
distribution to gain visibility, inventory levels, your ability to meet customer demands and shipment
schedules. Optimization can reduce operational costs, provide world class compliance f or
customers and vendors, and leverage real-time inf ormation to manage your warehouse
operations. Applied smartly, they can bring your organizations logistics strategy will help provide
a competitive edge.
Some high perf ormance strategies adaption in dif f erent levels of operation in warehousing and
distribution can help these management challenges:
Labor Management
Tracking real-time activity of warehouse
workers and comparing them against labor
standards and applying a tool to improve
worker productivity.
Reduce time wasted by deploying methods
that reduce travel time, condense the pick
f ace thus allowing your staf f to work
smarter, not harder.
Go real time and get rid of paper. You can
gain visibility with a warehousing and distribution control system with dashboards, voice-
and light directed activities.
Load Building/Cubing
Can determine the ideal pallet level and placement to determine f or each item and enable
the warehouse to reduce spacing requirements.
Consider methods that manage the f low f aster and more ef f icient.
Task Management
Coordination of the day-to-day work in the warehousing and distribution and create a
combination of cycles such as when a worker puts a pallet away, and retrieves the next
pallet on the way to the dock area.
Group orders and concurrently picking SKUs f or multiple orders, this will allow the
warehouse worker to be more productive.
Eliminate travel arrange warehouse workers where one remains in a location and retrieves
the item to a central location.
Slot t ing
Determine the optimal mix of storage mediums and the ideal location based upon projected
f amily groupings, replenishment and cubic velocity.
Use a mixed-case palletizing system to determine if the assembly process will be more
ef f icient. This can be done by streamlining with semi-automated or automated systems;
f or more ef f iciency.
Most importantly, reducing time wasted and f aster turn-around times will reduce logistics
costs and reduce the stress on warehousing employees and driving towards operational
improvements. It is critical to your warehousing staf f ability to f ill orders quickly, accurately
and saf ely.
Commonwealth Industrial Services, Inc. (CIS) is an industrial services company
located in Hopewell, Virginia. Although historically a service business, CIS primary
prof it center is the packaging and resale of ammonium sulf ate.
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