A straight-forward way to improve pick labor productivity is to eliminate the travel back and forth to the office and the shipping/packaging areas between order picks. One way to accomplish this is to have one operator pick multiple orders at the same time, or Cluster Pick, if possible. […]
Category: Space Utilization
Warehouse within a Warehouse
Using a Forward Pick strategy helps keep a smaller volume of inventory in easily accessible bins (Forward Pick) with the excess stock in remote bins (Reserve Storage) (Figure 1). The Forward Pick zone in a warehouse functions as a “warehouse within a warehouse”: many of the most popular SKUs are stored there in small amounts, […]
Know Your Order Profile
A basic principle to optimizing warehouse space is evaluating and selecting the most space efficient storage equipment. Using more dense storage equipment is a key factor to reduce space requirements. […]
Know Your ABCs
Paying attention to the fastest selling items to make sure they are located in the most advantageous picking position will generate significant labor cost savings. If available space is a concern, slotting will also help improve storage utilization by focusing on the slowest movers to see if their assigned bin space can be reduced. […]
Space Utilization Part One
In the first of a two part series, The Supply Chain Doctor Chris Barnes will be discussing various Space Utilization concepts. […]