Each company tries to find the best practices that improve performance of warehouse operations facilitating the supply chain managers to focus on achieving efficiency at the lowest costs possible. While it may be a tough task, there are certain ways that can be adopted to maximize productivity and maintaining customer satisfaction. Here are a few of them:

Despite the technological advancements, there is no substitute for careful time-tracking, physical organization of space and willingness to spend money to improve efficiency.

While warehouse operations differ from industry to industry, the greatest effort is understood to be in the picking process. This can be done in a number of ways.

Frequently Picked Stock: When a frequently picked stock is placed closest to the shipping area, it helps improve the efficiency and reduce the picking time. This can only be done by analyzing the sales data.

Picking Travel Time: The second most important way to improve efficiency would be reducing the travel time of products. Minimizing travel time between picking locations can greatly improve productivity. A well planned warehouse layout aids this precisely.

There are other ways of enhancing the picking process such as electronic picking ticket that may include hand-held RF readers and printers. This rapidly progressing sector, companies are also introducing pick-to-light and voice recognition technology. Many world-class warehouse operations have also adopted voice picking to complement the pick-to-light systems in place for their fast-moving products.

Many companies might not be able to afford new technologies and having a large warehouse is not the solution to every problem. To substantially increase and boost the business’ operational efficiency, every warehouse need to adopt certain calculated practices.