How to Make Your Warehouse Operations Pain Free
Current events are testing the supply chain in new ways. The pandemic, HGV driver shortages and an increased regulatory burden on the supply chain have created the perfect storm that warehouses must weather.
But the current situation presents an opportunity as well as a challenge. Now is the time for warehouses to optimise their operations and streamline their processes for their long-term survival and success.
What should these processes include and which warehouse improvement ideas will work best? The answers come with adopting digital technology.
What are the Pain Points of Warehousing?
Pain points exacerbate effort and reduce efficiency. Typically, they occur within different processes or arise from poor communication.
They include:
- Reporting inaccuracies
- Manual data entry
- Picking processes
- Checking arriving inventory
- Organisation
- Communication.
Of these, lack of organisation and poor communication can affect various areas of a business, and become underlying causes of ongoing problems and pain points.
Managing data is critical to running a warehouse efficiently. This includes not only recording and reporting procedures but also the methods for carrying these things out.
If the warehouse relies on manual data input, this is likely to become a time-consuming task, and it’s vulnerable to human error.
The result is often that there are inconsistencies in reporting issues, arising from slow or late procedures, or inaccurate record-keeping.
Picking is another potential stress point where inefficiency can hamper productivity. Small, individual delays can accumulate and impact productivity. With so much of the supply chain dependent on a just-in-time model, delays can cause unsettling ripples with long-term consequences.
Moving Towards Pain-free Warehousing
Just as in a medical examination, addressing the pain points requires a focus on the underlying issues that are causing them.
Inspections and audits should underpin efficient working and identify problem areas, but these procedures themselves need to be efficient.
Automation of auditing and making the process of carrying it out both more accurate and convenient creates the right foundation on which to build pain-free warehouse operations.
Accurate auditing can help uncover the underlying causes of problems in the warehouse and help prevent issues arising in the first place.
Audits can:
- Identify pain points and risks
- Provide cost reduction ideas
- Help to optimise warehouse layouts
- Drive efficiency and improve productivity.
The Warehouse Auditor app is an automated, mobile inspection app / tool developed for auditors, health / safety and compliance teams and warehouse managers.
It offers user-friendly, customisable templates that address the demands of modern warehouse management, using cloud-based connectivity and easy to use, intuitive functions.
With it, warehouse professionals can:
- Carry out inspections
- Audit sites for health and safety
- Sync to databases for offline reporting
- Reduce paper forms and manual error
- Report and record data for immediate action.
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