Discrete manufacturers, regardless of the size of their production line and factory floor, need to account for their business supplies, raw materials and finished goods.
To do this, you must identify the importance of material handling as a critical step in the production improvement process.
To do this, you need to improve your warehouse efficiency. It is critical for a manufacturing organization in today’s globalized and competitive environment to control costs and minimize material handling time. This makes material handling solutions a core need of time.
A much efficient material handling process needs a well-designed warehouse layout. It plays a significant role in material handling. You need an efficient warehouse because it helps streamline the material handling process, reduce overheads, decrease employee movement, mitigate safety risks, shorten delivery time, and improve customer service.
A poor warehouse structure increases motion wastes (unnecessary movements in the facility eroding warehouse productivity), causes production bottlenecks, and elevates the risk of injury mainly because of manual material handling. Your warehouse layout is crucial even in automated material handling. Your warehouse, in either case, should keep everything together and effectively. It should politely impact the overall wellbeing of your workers – boost employee morale by keeping their physical and mental health well-sustained and improved.
Now, without further ado, here’s a few things you must keep in mind if you are opening up a warehouse or just moving your shop.
Determine your primary and secondary warehouse objectives:
First thing first, consider why do you need a warehouse? Obviously, to store and manage your raw materials, finished products and other supplies. It’s your prime objective and there is a lot more than this. Determine the material handling processes that need to be prioritized in developing a well-structured warehouse. You may only want to implement cross-docking, or looking to improve inventory management. Or, you may be wishing to improve material picking and packing.
With clear and achievable goals, you can structure your warehouse layout quite thoughtfully. All these objectives support your larger aim of maintaining efficient material handling.
Estimate warehouse capacity; how much stock you can store:
Next, is the stock size. Determine the quantity of inventory stock you can manage in your storage facility. It will help you make smart decisions about the type of warehouse layout you must have. You cannot afford to have an overloaded facility. It will have a detrimental impact on your material handling. Poorly stacked loads can fall over the workers, causing injuries. Likewise, storing the goods improperly will increase the workers’ efforts and cause time delays because they need to move one product to access another.
You can use material handling equipment to move the stock, but for this you must have enough space in your storage facility to easily move and use them.
Maintain uninterrupted flow to keep operations moving:
Your warehouse design should enable the workers to move the goods without any interruption. A quick and trouble-free flow of goods through a storage facility improves material handling. Place material handling machinery in the easy access of the workers. And, make sure that all material is set nearby to the respective workstation.
To do this, the best option is to use material handling systems that will automate and optimize the flow of goods.
Increase workers speed by using the space efficiently:
The most effective use of the available space and optimizing the accessibility will help you increase the speed of your workers. Eventually, you will be having a well-organized material handling process. Account for all your storage-related warehouse needs. Not only the desired stock, you should also determine the space you must have to store additional supplies or surplus materials. Store the pallets or unit loads in a way that a worker doesn’t need to move other goods to access it.
Make sure your racks are safely and readily accessible by pallet jacks and forklifts. Vertical stacking will give you more space and quick accessibility to goods.
Bottom Line:
By keeping all these things at the forefront of your mind, you can build a well-structured warehouse layout that will eventually lead to efficient material handling. Moreover, consider implementing a material handling automation tool like the one MWI Solutions provides to manage, monitor and automate your material handling processes.
