2012 | Warehousing Insights | Material Handling Systems - Part 2
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Conveyor Down in the 2nd Shift, On a Holiday Eve

July 13, 2012
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This note came to us regarding one of our Service & Maintenance clients, a major retailer distribution operation in Dallas, TX, and the experience it had with our technician. With a power conveyor out during the evening, the night before a holiday, he needed fast assistance.

 

“Tuesday night (July 3) we experienced a significant conveyor failure on night shift. The belt on a straight conveyor section leading into a critical area had broken and wrapped around the drive unit. A huge mess on the night before a holiday.”

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Posted in Order Picking & Fulfillment|

10 Ways to Reduce Inventory Errors Through Order Picking

June 25, 2012
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checking inventory at a warehouse

Mistakes happen, but in order picking operations, reducing the number of errors is critical. Because order picking is the last touch point between you and your customers, it’s more important than public relations, press releases, or your website. Whether you’re shipping direct to consumers or to another processing operation, customers are directly impacted. Not only is the customer with the incorrect order harmed, so are potential future customers who suffer because of inventory errors delaying orders.

What are some ways you can increase inventory accuracy related to order picking?

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Posted in Order Picking & Fulfillment|

Protecting Order Pickers in Rack Aisles

June 22, 2012
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Picking orders in a pallet rack aisle

“We need help before someone gets hurt”

The situation is familiar: in a busy warehouse or distribution center, you can have dozens or hundreds of order pickers that walk the floor with carts and clipboards or scan guns to pick orders for shipping. These are usually focused people who have the job in mind. After all, you’ve probably told them how speed is of the essence – which it is. The problem is that in many or most operations, there are also forklifts, walkies, or electric powered jacks operating in the same space, often in tightly spaced pallet rack aisles.

And guess what? The guys driving those forklifts are busy and focused on the job, too. It’s almost assured that if you have this situation, you’ve had accidents, or near-accidents — which you may never hear of, until the near-miss isn’t a miss at all.

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Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|

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
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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
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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
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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
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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|

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