Scott Stone | Warehousing Insights | Material Handling Systems - Part 39
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Securing High Value Inventory on Pallet Racks

May 17, 2012
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pallet rack aisle

It’s always difficult to secure high-value inventory in the warehouse, and it’s even harder when the load resides in pallet racks, which are larger, have a conventionally open design, and more difficult to secure than inventory that sits on shelves or in carousels or within tool cribs.  Pallet rack loads can be palletized or stacked on decking, but either way they are more “open” than other types of inventory.  What are your alternatives?

  1. Use upper bays to keep it out of reach.
  2. Utilize secure aisles.
  3. Store it in a separate area/facility.
  4. Utilize rack-mounted security cages.
  5. Utilize solid-side rack security enclosures.

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Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|

How to Store Stacks of Empty Pallets

May 4, 2012
by

pallet stacks

Most distribution and manufacturing operations deal with empty pallets. Sometimes, a lot of them.

Empty pallets take space you could use for something else as they clutter your receiving area. Sometimes they’re splintery, with nails protruding from the sides ready to bite a passerby. People re-use their pallets, holding onto them for a period of time until they’re used for an outbound shipment. But while they’re in your facility, they can eat space, potentially injure people, and generally cause trouble.

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Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|

Vertical Lift Modules vs. Horizontal Carousels

May 2, 2012
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Horizontal Carousels vs. Verticla Lift Modules

When you are considering an automated picking solution, you have lots of choices. One of the more frequent comparisons is between horizontal carousels and VLM’s – vertical lift modules. Both promise similar efficiency gains: they bring products to pickers rather forcing pickers to move to picking stations in shelving or racks. But which is best? That depends on what set of criteria you use, and what’s important to you.

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Posted in Automation, Labor & Efficiency|

OSHA, Whistleblowers, and Safety Bonuses

April 9, 2012
by

carrying cartons in a warehouse, wearing safety vest

OSHA has recently released a guide to safety incentives, disincentives, and reporting issues. It’s worth a quick read if you manage a manufacturing, warehousing, or industrial facility.

This document focuses on reporting/non-reporting workplace injury issues. OSHA says that “Reporting a work-related injury or illness is a core employee right, and retaliating against a worker for reporting an injury or illness is illegal discrimination under section 11(c).”  Of course, smart companies want to know if there are unsafe conditions or practices. But what if your safety rewards program is discouraging employees from reporting incidents, or even near-misses?

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Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|

How to Benchmark Your Warehouse

March 26, 2012
by

warehousing operation

Comparison is natural – and necessary

Everyone likes to see how they’re doing vs. their industry peers.  This isn’t just a natural urge to compare yourself, it’s a vital part of doing business.

Benchmarking, at the heart of it, is comparing your performance to others like you. You look at your business processes and outcomes, and how they stack up to the performance metrics of industry leaders, your peers, and the best from similar operations. In warehousing, it is particularly important to understand where you are, and where you could be with reconfigurations, tweaks, and innovations that others are using to improve their numbers.  What do you specifically measure? Typically this can include quality, cost, and time. Specifically, it can get much more complex.

At the end it helps you understand the success of your peers and how you can reproduce that success.

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Posted in Warehousing & Distribution|

How to Make Warehouse & Plant Visitors Safer: A Guide

February 29, 2012
by

warehouse visitors or guests
In a fast-paced distribution center, there is plenty of forklift traffic, moving conveyors, packing machines, carousels, and dock doors. Same with manufacturing; you have all kinds of production machinery, welding (human and robotic), and heavy material being handled, stacked, or processed, along with the forklifts and other handling equipment. It’s hard enough to keep your own people – the ones who should know the lay of the land – safe in these environments. But what about visitors who haven’t had the benefit of your safety training and the situational awareness that your employees develop over time?

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Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|

9 Ways to Reduce Product Damage in Your Warehouse

February 16, 2012
by

crushed box

In warehouse & manufacturing operations, things get broken. They break in a number of ways, and it’s expensive. You’ve probably seen product broken or damaged in amazing and improbable ways  if you’ve been in this business for any length of time. We had a client once buy a bunch of mismatched, used industrial shelving (not from us), only to see it collapse and dump thousands of tiny aircraft components on the floor. It had to be swept up and discarded since it was all mixed up and visually impossible to sort.

Those are extraordinary examples, but everyday inventory damage that cost “only” a few hundred or thousand dollars can savage your bottom line.

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Posted in Warehousing & Distribution|

To-Do List for Moving a Warehouse

February 7, 2012
by

warehouse reconfiguration

Over the past four decades, we’ve seen plenty of operations move. We’ve installed entirely new conveyor systems into functioning operations without disturbing the flow of existing work. We’ve seen companies pick up an entire distribution operation and move it across two hundred feet of parking lot into another building. It’s not new territory for us, and if you have managed a manufacturing or warehousing operation long, it’s probably not for you either.

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Posted in Warehousing & Distribution|

Justifying AisleCop Forklift Safety Gate Systems

January 13, 2012
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AisleCop Safety System

We see two kinds of operations that have utilized AisleCop® forklift safety gate systems. The first are those companies who have defined traffic plans and are looking to prevent possible accidents in high-risk, limited-visibility, or heavy-traffic aisles. They foresee potential accidents and are taking measures to prevent them. The second kind are companies who have had an incident, or a near-miss.

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Posted in Forklift - Pedestrian Safety|

How to Implement the 5S Approach in Workcells & Workstations

January 4, 2012
by

workstation with 5S implementation

Based on 5 Japanese words that begin with “S,” the 5S Philosophy homes in on effective work place organization and standardized work procedures. When correctly implemented, it reduces waste and increases efficiency and overall work quality. You’ll also have a safer, more effective operation and employees who are more checked in than they were before. It simplifies work flow and helps you find inefficiency.

You may see things like empty flow racks, needless processes, over stocking, redundant operations, looming maintenance problems and more.

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Posted in Storage, Organization & Workstations|

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