Today, warehousing goes beyond just storage solutions. With the changing enterprise models, increasing diversification of suppliers and logistics, warehouses are playing a crucial role in supply chains. This is why they are required to deliver more efficient functionality, accessibility, and flexibility than ever before.
As the industry embracing technological innovation, warehouse design is becoming more pertinent to deliver quality services to customers and clients. Moreover, working in a well-planned layout is less time-consuming and cost-efficient.
Imagine working in narrow aisles, poor storage and organization, tightly packed spaces, excessive overhead loads, how frustrating working in such environments could be!
Thus, staying competitive and relevant all comes down to maintaining warehouse design, and understanding where to start is crucial to stay on top of the game.
Smooth Flow of Operation
What we are concerned here is the logical sequence of operations where each task can be performed efficiently. Further, we are concerned with the uninterrupted and controlled movement of workers, materials, and traffic to avoid clashes, high traffic areas, and work density. Also, to keep the workflow undisturbed, learning trainer skills, and forklift certification is important to perform your duties effortlessly and safely.
It is also important to know where goods and materials are placed within the system. Also, check whether or not the handling equipment is located in the designated area instead of standing in the middle of the aisle. Locating the various warehouse activities will contribute to an efficient flow of operations with a minimum amount of disruption.
Well-organized space
Considering how to make maximum use of warehouse space?
You should allocate stock processing purposes and operational storage first, while providing minimum space for associated functions like working areas, offices, battery charging, empty pallet storage, etc. Thankfully, we have an array of storage equipment to make not only optimum use of floor area, but also the cubic capacity of warehouse space.
As most storage pieces of equipment are free-standing and need no structural support from the wall, you can easily organize your goods and materials with a proper design layout.
This way, it is possible to have flexibility in the operation by choosing the storage equipment that best suits the current stock profile. You can customize it later as the business evolves to fulfill future requirements. Again, this can be done without disruptive and expensive changes to the actual building, but you still have to keep in mind the flow and now the throughput.
Throughput
Warehouse throughput does not only mean the categories of products in a warehouse, but also its nature and velocity through the flow. By nature, it means factors affecting inventory movements like fragility, bulk, hazard, compatibility, and security requirements.
The velocity of products considers the volume that is moving within the warehouse each day. You need to identify minimum activity levels as well as pick period activities. The more accurate is the throughput data, and more time spending and analyzing it, the less the risk.
Conclusion
While considering your warehouse design and layout, the factors of workflow and space should be balanced to enable the command for throughput. Likewise, the flow of goods through your outbound or inbound supply chain should be considered while deciding on the number of warehouses.
Finally, concerning the capacity needs of individual warehouses, think about the characteristics of your product, service offering, and the kinds of activities you expect to carry out within the facility.
We hope the above reasons will leave you with the impression that designing a warehouse is worth undertaking!