The warehouse. The office.

Sometimes it’s as if one doesn’t exist to the other. As one customer told us, “it’s like we have two companies here, and one doesn’t know what the other is up to.”

But when you’re trying to improve your operation, or even to operate well, it’s impossible to separate the two functions. Decisions can be made in one area that can impact the other severely, so communication and cooperation are vital. Too bad it doesn’t always work that way. How can you improve it?

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Jay Moris has an excellent article in this month’s Inbound Logistics on ways you can cut expenses in your e-commerce operation. Some quick pointers:

• Increase customer satisfaction. Moris explains that right-sizing your packages can reduce carton size and ensure customers receive the right package at the right time.
• Reduce packaging costs. By using cartonization strategies, you can reduce parcel sizes – and by extension, shipping and packaging costs.
• Decrease labor and increase throughput. By optimizing its sortation systems, one retailer cut 62 cents off every package shipped.
• Reduce freight, sortation, and shipping costs. Reducing carton dimensions does all of these things in a world where just a single sheet of paper is capable of changing a carton’s shipping class.

We live in a world where weight and dimensional measurement of packages is becoming faster and easier to gauge. Shippers can and will be able to charge more for smaller and smaller differences, so every bit of the process you can automate and optimize, the better. There are more tips (and plenty more detail) at the article – check it out.

We routinely help industrial and warehousing customers fit their facilities with wire security cages and partitions. They can be built into just about any configuration you want, fit just about any space needed, and can be specified with locks ranging from padlocks to biometric locks.

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Since 25% of all warehouse injuries occur at the loading dock, warehousing and manufacturing operations need to pay close attention to this area. Shipping and receiving docks both suffer similar problems in that they are bustling places. At peak times they can get very busy, and when people are pressed for time, they become careless. So, what are the common injury types, and what can you do to avoid them?

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Most distribution and many manufacturing operations must deal with empty pallets – sometimes it’s a lot of pallets. They take space you could use for something else. They clutter your receiving areas. Sometimes they’re splintery, with nails protruding from the sides ready to bite a passerby. People re-use their pallets of course, holding onto them for a period of time until you can ship them back out. But while they’re in your facility, they can at space, potentially injure people, and generally cause trouble.

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36% of forklift injury accidents involve pedestrians; that’s tens of thousands of accidents a year in the U.S. alone. And we all know that when it comes to pedestrians, there is no such thing as a minor forklift accident.

We’ve recently added a free eBook focused on this topic. It covers a range of processes, equipment, and training that you can undertake to help reduce the chances of fatalities or serious injuries in your operation.

Includes information on:

• Training – not just for forklift drivers. Not just for warehouse personnel. Not just for your employees
• Speed limits – why forklifts handle like bathtubs, and why that makes speed a safety concern
• Facility clutter – the enemy of safety
• Environmental factors – why lighting, noise levels, and visual clutter can cause accidents
• Solid vs. Visual – when should you utilize physical barriers vs. floor tape to demarcate lanes
• When to automate – How to deploy automated solutions such as motion sensors, safety gates, and more
• Traffic management planning – why you should create a traffic management plan. You already have one – it may just not be the one you want
• Links to relevant information from OSHA, safety consultants, and more

Download “Shared Space is a Dangerous Place” today. (1MB PDF file opens in a new window).

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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When was the last time you had your pallet rack inspected?

Every operation that operates mechanical lifting equipment is required by the  Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to inspect and document the safety of their racking systems. It’s the most common storage equipment in the world, and an inspection can not only help you comply with the law – it can help you see other issues in your warehouse. We have created a checklist of items to check and ways to check them.

• See the article: Pallet Rack Inspection Guide

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 probably if you have managed a manufacturing or warehousing operation long, it’s not for you either.

Like moving your personal household, it’s chaotic, fast-paced, inconvenient and usually painful – in fact more painful than a personal move because there are so many moving parts, so many ways to get it wrong. How can you reduce the pain and get back into gear as fast as possible?

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Based on 5 Japanese words that begin with ‘S’, the 5S Philosophy hones in on effective work place organization and standardized work procedures. When correctly implemented, it reduces waste, 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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