Warehouses are some of the most important industrial facilities out there. Even if the public doesn’t always think about it, the supply chain and all its moving parts, including warehouses, make modern living possible.
Factory warehouse storage
However, warehouses can leave a lot of money on the table if managers don’t take the time to optimise workflow and design storage layout for maximum productivity. Here are a few tips for making the most of your space and assets.
1. Combine Static and Mobile Shelving
Static and mobile shelving are both useful independently, but many spaces find compelling reasons to combine them. For example, a warehouse that deals with multiple SKUs at any given time with different seasonal demand might benefit from a combination of shelving. They can designate static racking areas for slower-moving product and dynamic storage areas with mobile shelves for faster-moving merchandise.
Or vice versa. The beauty of combining movable shelving with permanent racking is that you’re not locked into one configuration even as your business or storage needs change.
2. Add Mezzanine Flooring Before You Expand
At some point, a warehouse manager looks at the space available, next season’s freight forecast, and assesses where it’ll get staged and stowed.
For times like these, there’s mezzanine flooring. Adding a second tier of storage locations requires intensive and potentially lengthy renovations. However, the upshot is that it saves you from breaking ground on a building addition or a new facility before you really need to.
3. Subdivide Existing Storage to Organise Smaller Products
There are plenty of other clever ways to maximise your available storage space. One is to add partitions to turn pallet-sized stowing locations into multi-tier racks for smaller, manually picked items. For instance, adding another tier to an existing storage location is great when you’re dealing with case packs of very small items that don’t require a whole bin location of their own.
You could even triple or quadruple your space by subdividing pallet-sized picking locations and then using steel bins or baskets to organise small parts and products. Steel is a resilient material with multiple grade and style options for every price point. You’ll have to update the bin listings in your warehouse management system, but that’s a lot easier than building new shelving.
4. Find the Right Pallet (Or Pallet Service) for the Job
One common way that warehouses squander resources and productivity is investing in the wrong type of pallets for the work they do. Pallets are universal, but pallets that degrade quickly or raise concerns about contamination cause more problems than they solve.
Lots of warehouses optimise their warehouse pallet procurement and recycling using third-party “pallet as a service” companies. Managers often choose the cheapest pallet, but these services match pallets to workflows every time and deal with pallets once they’re ready for decommissioning.
Getting the right pallet is critical for another reason: not-quite-standard-sized wooden pallets and other designs aren’t always compatible with automated warehouse material handling systems. Most pallet “technology” might be as old as the hills. Yet, upholding steady productivity might require closer collaboration between supply chain partners when it comes to choosing and procuring them.
5. Have a Place (And an RFID Tag) For Everything
Most of us have at least a partial understanding of the “5S” concept:
- Sort
- Set in Order
- Shine
- Standardise
- Sustain
As the EPA notes, “Standardise” and “Sustain” aren’t about creating busywork for employees. They’re about real-world environmental sustainability along with optimised workflows and conscientious use of materials.
5S means having a designated place for everything in a warehouse, including cleaning materials, disposable products, equipment, handheld tools, personal protective gear, and others. In turn, equipment is less likely to go missing or break. Plus, employees are more likely to (for example) finish opened cleaning products before reaching for an unopened one. In both cases, warehouses can optimise their use of materials, lengthen the life cycle of important equipment, and productively find items.
For warehouses with lots of moving equipment and handheld implements like tools and scanners, the humble RFID tag can be an ally. RFID tags are excellent for optimising a move to a new warehouse and ensuring nothing get misplaced or missorted in the transition.
6. Use Automated Guided Vehicles to Move Product or Assets
In a few short years, we went from automation being an abstract idea to being a daily reality even in mid-sized warehouse facilities. Even if you’re not ready to think about robot product pickers, there are other ways to optimise warehouse storage and transportation using automation.
Automated guided vehicles, or AGVs, are one of these. AGVs are autonomous lift trucks and pallet movers that safely traverse a whole warehouse to bring raw materials, products, equipment, or works-in- progress where they're needed. AGVs can be programmed for your specific warehouse layout using CAD-like software or by undergoing a human-guided “walkthrough.”
Endless Ways to Optimise Warehouse Storage
The modern warehouse has lots of tools, techniques, storage solutions, and new technologies at its disposal. How many of these assets your warehouse uses is up to you — and they range in expense and complexity.
From fully automating the storage and picking processes to simply being more conscientious about where tools go when they’re not in use, it might be time for your warehouse technology and even its culture to evolve in the name of optimal productivity.
The author, Megan Nichols is a freelance blogger and writer.
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