The warehouse is a rather complex work environment, and regardless whether it’s big or small, space can easily become an issue leading to more large scale issues such as putting the safety of employees at stake.
Along with risking sick leaves and compensation claims which as a result leads to jeopardising your company’s reputation and fewer profits, there’s the fact the goods you store and transport can also get damaged.
Material Handling
One of the most efficient and affordable solutions is to maximise warehouse storage resorting to the help of material handling equipment in the likes of lifting trolleys considering the most challenging tasks for a worker are lifting and moving objects. These are the basic types of equipment pieces designed to provide safety for employees while at the same time increase warehouse productivity.
Since according to OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) some of the most common workplace injuries are back injuries due to the physical work required in the form of bending, pushing, and pulling, along with the lifting and moving, it’s essential to rid the employees of the heavy work; the bonus of this is fast and easy transportation of the goods, even at long distances and reduction of the operational costs.
Additionally, the efficiency you get from it positively affects your business too. This goes to show why investing in adequate material handling equipment must be one of your priorities. Of course, lifting trolleys aren’t the only type of trolleys you can find. The range of trolleys is wide, so you’d have to make the choice based on your warehouse requirements.
Apart from choosing based on the lifting loads, the trolley capacity, and the amount of goods you transport at a time, you can also decide on the model by the type of goods you store and transport, whether it’s industrial shelving storage system or pallet racking, the aisle width to ensure the material flow goes undisturbed, and lastly, the design and features of the trolleys you find most useful.
If the positive effects on productivity and safety weren’t enough to convince you, the additional aspects and benefits of trolleys would. Not only is their design sturdy and reliable, but it’s also rather compact, making them easy to handle, locate and store, more so in the case of collapsible trolleys. On the plus side too, they’re low maintenance.
As soon as you’ve decided on the purchase, choosing from the vast selection of lifting trolleys, shelf trolleys, and wagon trolleys to name some, it’s important to arrange training sessions for the employees so they can learn how to handle the equipment correctly, as well as the different materials, how to store or transport them safely.
It’s equally important to train them how to inspect the material handling equipment also to prevent accidents and damages; the sooner a minor issue is detected and treated, the better in terms of safety and costs. Likewise, it’s advisable to invest in and schedule regular inspection and maintenance.
Optimised Layout Design
Having the right pieces of material handling equipment, like the lifting trolleys, wouldn’t make much of a difference if the warehouse layout itself is poorly planned. You have to consider warehouse management seriously, not leaving out vertical space when it comes to adequate storage; every inch matters!
This is crucial because creating more storage space can be expensive in the case of building up new facilities. Furthermore, an inefficient warehouse where you can’t move easily out of obstructions in the way of handling equipment and stored goods without any particular order can be disastrous to the whole operation, resulting in loss of time, goods, and eventually clients.
Determine what you’re storing. It’s one of the organisation basics to keep stored items labelled and categorised, be it in terms of size or items that have to be shipped faster than others requiring quick access, while ensuring there’s enough traffic area for the material handling equipment to move around without undisturbed, carefully marking it from the pedestrian area.
When the traffic flow is well taken care of, there’s also easy accessibility of the required items. In case you have enough space, it’s advisable to separate the lanes into ingoing and outgoing.
Depending on your business, there has to be enough space for your receiving, packing and shipping needs too, plus storage for the equipment. It’s vital for your warehouse success not to leave out any of these considerations; when you’ve taken care of all of these requirements you can count on optimised layout.
Sustainability
Material handling efficiency isn’t only related to the right set of equipment, but also the way you use it. You could easily join up the green trends and get sustainable habits by opting to be more prudent with material handling, choosing to reuse and recycle whenever possible. One example would be reusing and recycling the packaging.
All of this is an effort to cut down the waste and not let your business thrive at the expense of the environment. Given that warehouse waste can be expensive, and harmful to nature, you can’t say you’ve taken warehouse planning seriously unless you’ve made waste management part of it.