It’s that time of the year– the holiday season. It’s the time of year when people give gifts to one another, and spending is at an all-time high in December. Do you work in a warehouse? How can you stay ahead of the curve during peak warehouse season? Ideally, you’ll optimize your pick-pack-ship process using best practices.
Scan and Put Stuff Away
First, scan and put away items before outbound orders ship so e-commerce vendors can make sure stock is available for sale. If possible, do digital put-away to eliminate the humor error associated with manual stock counting.
Classify Your Product Storage Correctly
Next, classify items in the warehouse according to turnover, such that you have an ABC classification of inventory whereas A items are top sellers, B items are average sellers and C items have low turnaround. Utilize a warehouse management system to do this, with the objective being that you’ll end up reducing travel distance while minimizing time spent searching for/moving goods within the warehouse.
Have Strategic Layouts Throughout Your Warehouse
Thirdly, how’s your layout? You want to make sure you have optimal walking paths, enough space between racks, and plenty of picking carts and packing benches available for the busiest time of the year. Basically, do what you can to avoid bottlenecks. You might need to create “one way streets” or “zones” to implement a workable layout design that maximizes efficiency.
Order Picking Technology
What about order picking? Why not create pick zones, assigning pickers to each zone? This can help reduce travel time within the warehouse.
Finally, utilize user-friendly tech such as smartphone apps that can help scan items during picking. Since it’s likely that the holiday season means warehouses hire seasonal workers, do what you can to simplify your training process so new pickers can get to work quickly.
Affiliated Warehouse Companies can help you find high quality warehousing services across North America. For more information, call 732-739-2323.
