A well-organized warehouse, as part of the corporate strategy. It plays a central role not only in logistics management but also in terms of increasing earnings.
A good organization of goods within the storage areas. In fact, Get into a significant saving of time and space used, with a consequent greater production efficiency.
Gone are the days of the warehouse as a synonym for stacked materials and messy goods. The only goal was to cram shelves and warehouses as much as possible. Today the warehouse has become an environment with very high operational efficiency, technologically advanced. It surely added value for the business activities that involve it.
A well-designed and organized warehouse. In fact, greatly affects all those business operations that, directly or indirectly, have to do with logistics. Greater organization inevitably translates into greater efficiency, with fewer human errors and reduced downtime. Tips to build the business
How to reorganize a warehouse from scratch:
In USA, the corporate culture linked to the warehouse is certainly of a high level. But there are many warehouses that would need a radical reorganization to become real logistic machines.
The first thing to do to proceed with a total optimization of the warehouse. It is to analyze the criticality present in terms of items to be managed, daily movements, order preparation time, checks and access to goods.
At this point, thanks to the data collected with this analysis. It will be possible to readjust the spaces and logistics processes with greater precision and safety in the results. We will achieve in terms of the overall efficiency of our warehouse.
Here are some questions we could ask ourselves to identify the critical points of our logistics flow:
- The goods enter and leave the gates easily?
- Does the passage of machinery in the warehouse hinder the work of the operators?
- do stock management errors often occur?
- Having become aware of the limits and strengths of our system, we can then work to create fluid operational flows, especially in the freight forwarding area, by monitoring the errors that occur to avoid problems related to product accumulations or shortages.
These are just some operational examples of warehouse optimization. An activity that, if well designed and implemented, can make companies spend up to 30% less on logistics costs. At the same time improving staff performance and safety at work.
The 6 functional areas to be optimized in an efficient warehouse:
A well-organized warehouse is therefore an excellent starting point to make companies of all types and sizes more efficient and competitive on the market, as well as technologically more advanced. Especially since a logistical reorganization activity in many cases includes the introduction of a modern system. We can guarantee the adequate management of a complex system.
An application tailored to the needs and characteristics of our warehouse. It will be essential to allow flawless operations within the different areas into which a modern warehouse is divided. So let’s see them one by one, taking stock of their importance within the general flow of goods. Tips to choose the used forklift for warehouse
Unloading and goods receiving Area:
The first area subject to optimization within a warehouse is undoubtedly the one dedicated to unloading goods from vehicles. The space can be organized in squares or in ramps, depending on the type of packages to be unloaded.
In principle, the reception area is configured as an empty clearing where you can perform quick visual assessments of the goods arrived, checking for any damage to the pallets and verifying correspondence with the orders placed.
The reorganization of this area can include various interventions, from the installation of loading bays that will allow the goods to be directly unloaded in the warehouse without the use of forklifts, or side docks for unloading long materials such as tubular or rods from trucks. .
Office area and quality control:
A key role in the functioning of each warehouse is represented by the quality control area, an area where the goods arrived are evaluated following three different verification methods:
- Free access (without control)
- Sample check
- Total control
The goal of this area is to ensure that we are receiving materials in line with the standards agreed with our end customers in terms of finishing, assembly and conformity of the piece, essential requirements for obtaining finished products without defects.
If the quality checks are not passed, the unsuitable batches of goods will not continue their journey within the warehouse and will be set aside to be promptly returned to the supplier to allow for a new shipment.
Storage and Picking Area:
When the goods pass the quality checks, they are taken directly to the storage area, the heart of the warehouse where you can find shelved areas, ground areas and even automated areas where the goods will be organized and then picked up to move on to other logistics sectors.
The storage space is the one that more than any other requires a high degree of automation of information relating to material inputs and outputs, an element which in the optimization phase corresponds to the implementation of a modern, efficient and adequate management system for your needs. storage.
If a picking activity is envisaged in the operational flow of our warehouse, this takes place in an area close to the storage, in order to be able to easily work on homogeneous loading units and obtain mixed loading units, ready for exit from the warehouse. area.
Packaging and Consolidation area:
This is an extremely important warehouse area where pallets are consolidated and loaded onto vehicles for subsequent shipment.
An optimized consolidation process makes it possible to intelligently group the products from the storage and picking areas into the pallets, according to the final loading order, then packing the complete load unit with a protective film, ready to be shipped.
Shipping Area of Goods:
The last space in operational order to be considered within a logistics warehouse is the shipping area, where the goods to arrive from end customers are crammed and then loaded onto trucks.
In principle, it is a large space where it is possible to manage and organize the shipments to be made in the best possible way.
Those who build and use warehouses do not always include a shipping area in their logistics structure, convinced that paying for an empty space is not a good deal, but the advantages in adopting a shipping area are obvious:
- Better management of staff workload.
- Sharp decrease in delivery errors.
- We therefore have the opportunity to invest profitably to increase the efficiency of our entire logistics chain.
