Industrial Shelving Can Improve Order Picking Productivity
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Order in large warehouses and storage spaces is gold; it saves time, resources and improves productivity in every aspect of functioning. Still, a lot of companies struggle with clusters of products that slow down the process of picking and distributing and result in low productivity. And when business is at stake, doing more with less is always the ultimate incentive in order to protect the profit margin. So, how do you achieve a higher level of productivity while reducing all costs in a distribution operation? This also means that there would be less labour force at disposal and more orders, or higher volume of work.
One solution would be to do sort of an infrastructural change; install shelving systems for a better organization and easier approach to products and stock. You can choose from the vast offer of shelving online contractors that will offer you either a finished product or a customized solution for your space. Here are 5 supporting claims for installing shelving in the quest for increasing productivity and lowering costs:
1. Use industrial shelves to create order for various SKUs
When you work with multiple various SKUs, picking time gets largely reduced especially if all of them are in the same bin location. A good shelving online contractor will estimate your situation and offer a customized solution that will offer you order in the way how all various SKUs are placed. That way when your operator knows where everything is placed, he won’t spend extra 15 seconds just to find an item. It may seem little, but time is money.
2. A good shelving system reduces travelling time
It’s a known fact that about 50% (or even more in some cases) of order picking hours goes to travel time. That’s why so many companies turn to batch and cluster order picking strategies. Another strategy would be to install an industrial shelving system which will provide you a more organized approach to the products which will largely reduce your travel time.
3. Vertical and horizontal order picking is easier and more efficient
That’s actually the conventional order picking system which is perfect when at ground level because picking vertically costs a lot more than doing the picking horizontally. Partially that’s due to the lack of a system that will provide an easy horizontal approach to the SKUs. A system with shelves and good organization of your stock in clusters can ease the entire horizontal order picking strategy, thus result in bigger savings of both time and money.
4. Correct assignment of items to the correct storage media improves warehouse efficiency
There’s no bigger frustration than improperly stored SKUs; not just that the overall chaos causes waste of time and valuable resources, it also frustrates the responsible operatives that need to search for a particular stock for hours. To avoid this situation, make an organizational pattern: slow moving SKUs shouldn’t go on the pallet racks because they’ll slow down the picking process, just as fast moving SKUs shouldn’t be stored in shelving bins.