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Secret Weapons for Warehouse Storage Organisation

Secret Weapons for Warehouse Storage Organisation

Warehouse storage and organisation contribute to your overall warehouse efficiency. In turn, efficiency directly affects your bottom line. So, you could say that organised storage saves your business money!

Warehousing Storage Tips for Small Business

Storage, warehousing, and distribution used to be a niche service offering before e-commerce exploded. However, as more businesses opt to deliver direct to the public, the need for efficient warehouse fulfilment has grown exponentially.

The faster your warehouse can fulfil orders, the more money you stand to make. The safer the storage of the items in your care, the less you stand to lose.

Here are some expert tips to improve warehouse storage and operational efficiency.

Prioritise Warehouse Cleanliness

Regular cleaning serves two purposes. First, it helps to declutter—and you’ll most likely uncover a misplaced order or two. Second, it maintains a safer work environment for your employees.

When everything is neat, human and vehicular traffic (think, tractors and cherry pickers) can move through the aisles faster. Clear labelling also goes a long way to easy picking.

Consider a Gridiron Warehouse Layout

While long aisles may look neater, they’re not conducive to efficiency. Smaller “blocks” enables a more logical flow of traffic for faster picking. This is especially true when you pack commonly bundled items together.

The latter suggestion doesn’t work for every warehouse, but if you find that certain products are often purchased together (desks and chairs, for example), keeping them closer together can be a huge time-saver.

Scott Stone of Cisco-Eagle1 says: “Divide your facility by zones based on the pick type. This simplifies order picking and re-slotting because similar items with similar storage and picking methods are grouped together.”

Think Vertical for Optimal Shelf Utilisation

Stackable shelf bins enable you to pack up instead of packing further away. This is particularly useful if you use smaller bins for smaller inventory parts too.

Consider the durability of your bins or containers. They must be able to take the weight of what is packed on top of them. They must also withstand being unpacked and repacked often.

This is where sturdy Polyethylene plastic (manufactured for a lifetime, single-use) out-performs cardboard boxes and wooden pallets. All bias aside, promise.

Pioneer Plastics offers the widest range of warehouse storage solutions! 

Design According to YOUR business

While it is always helpful to hear from the experts or learn from other enterprises, it is important to remember that each warehouse is unique. This is not a cliché; each warehouse should be designed around achieving your organisation’s specific output needs.

The warehouse or distribution centre of a wholesaler will look entirely different for an automotive parts manufacturer.

It’s also good to remember that as your business grows, your warehouse storage layout may need an update too. PHSWire in 7 Ways to Organise Your Warehouse says: “No matter how organised you may be if your company sales are increasing each year, you will eventually need a new warehouse design layout or even a whole new warehouse to relocate to.” They continue, “As your company’s sales (hopefully) increase every year, this means space requirements in your warehouse will naturally need revising over time.”

Customise to Optimise!

It is because your warehouse is unique that you might need an entirely customised solution for your storage.

The beauty of rotational moulding is that Anything’s Possible. There’s no pallet, pack, or bin that we can’t produce. Our plastic products are designed to give you a lifetime’s use. We are SMETA Responsible Sourcing Certified, allowing us to supply products to renowned brands like Coca-Cola and Walmart group. That means that we can even produce food-safe storage.

When you chat with us about your custom warehouse storage requirements, here are some things we will ask about to ensure you get nothing less than the best.

  • Load weight, so we can determine the load strength and design against crushability.
  • The height to which you are packing, so we can consider load stability.
  • Pallet conditions.
  • Safety limits.
  • Weather or warehouse conditions (humidity, water, wind).
  • Warehouse clearance heights.

We genuinely care about the success of your operation. We can’t wait to supply the perfect solution to improve your warehouse operations.

Need advice or a custom design? Speak to a consultant 

Sources: 1Scott Stone, 13 Best Practices for Warehouse Productivity, Cisco-Eagle.

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