Waste can be a killer when you tin a warehouse operation. It can drain your business of vital cash flow and make it more difficult for everyone to get their jobs done.
Luckily, there are lots of simple things you can do to make your warehouse operations leaner and wave goodbye to waste…
Don’t overfill your warehouse
One thing that can really help you to cut down on waste in your warehouse is to simply avoid overfilling it in the first place. When it comes to inventory, you should operate a lean model, which means not ordering in any more than the minimum amount of stock you need to fulfil your orders. Good inventory software will help youtube manage that as effectively as possible.
Use wooden crates
One of the areas of waste that often does not get enough attention is the loss of actual products caused by them becoming contaminated in one way or another. Something that can really help with this is wooden crates. They allow for better airflow which means that perishable goods are less likely to suffer from mold and mildew. Obviously, if you’re working in an environment that gets wet, then covering with a tarp is also very important too.
Streamline your supply chain
You waste precious time, money, and resources when you transport your goods excessively. By streamlining your supply chain, you can cut out a lot of the moving around and have products delivered directly to your warehouse or in as few stops as possible, thus enabling you to have greater control over the process and far less wastage overall.
Audit your operations
Often, in the warehouse industry, we can do too much when we really could be doing a lot less. We build in processes that are not essential to the running of the business and make things more complicated than they need to be.
By auditing your operations, you can work out which things you do are truly necessary, which help to keep operations productive. And which are doing very little if any good at all. By eliminating the latter processes, you can reduce waste significantly.
Transfer to a paperless system
Despite modern technology, many warehouses are still operating on a primarily paper system when it comes to admin and packing. By transferring over to a paperless system, you can save a lot of paper waste, which is expensive and bad for the environment, cut down on the amount of ink you need to use, and also streamline your processes so that your operations are much more efficient too.
Invest in training
The better trained your employees are, the less time they will waste on doing things the inefficient way or making mistakes, and the more productive, efficient and effective your business will be.
Waste and warehouses may have gone hand in hand in years past, but that no longer needs to be the case, and the above advice will help you to start waving goodbye to waste once and for all.
