Solving Your Warehouse Organization Challenges with Modular Solutions
If you’re a warehouse manager, you face a wide variety of challenges on a daily basis. These challenges include maintaining the right amount of space, keeping good relations with your suppliers, and running your operation as efficiently as possible.
Whether your warehouse is a standalone operation or its designed to keep processes on your company’s factory floor running smoothly, those are only a few of the challenges.
One of the best ways to tackle them is via modular solutions, so let’s take a closer look at how this kind of modularity works and how it can help you meet and overcome those never-ending challenges.
What are Some of the Warehouse Operation Problems Faced by Warehouse Managers?
While managing a warehouse tends to be a bit of a sprawl—literally and figuratively—it is possible to break down the problems warehouse managers face into some basic categories:
Managing Space and Vertical Solutions
A warehouse is a near-perfect example of how space costs money, and managers need to figure out ways to reduce those costs. Storing inventory is a major problem, and while there are solutions like racks, shelving systems, bins and drawers, etc., the space management issue as a whole can be a handful.
Inventory Management
Managing inventory is a make or break issue for some businesses, and a lot of the problems land on warehouse managers. They need to have a system that tracks product levels and movement, all while meeting customer demand, so there’s major planning involved. For many managers, there are days when wrestling an octopus would feel like a day off compared to grappling with inventory management issues.
Managing the Work Force for Warehouse Productivity
Working in a warehouse is a tough job, and managing those workers is just as hard, perhaps more so. It involves a delicate balancing act between scheduling, training and motivating workers all while ensuring the optimal staff levels.
Add in retention issues, handling shifts and breaks, then throw in the employee rotation problem. It’s a lot to take on, and the challenges come fast and furious.
Using Agility to Get the Orders Right
Fulfilling orders accurately is at the heart of nearly every warehouse operation, but it’s easier said than done. Getting the specifics right is essential, and packaging and shipping have to be optimized to ensure on-time delivery while eliminating errors to create efficiency.
Logistics can complicate this process as well. Many warehouse managers have to handle a huge volume of product, while others are faced with the challenges of singular products ordered by demanding customers. Automation and tracking technology can help, but it’s a tricky set of problems and issues under the best of circumstances.
The Technology and Automated Storage Question
Warehouse technology has advanced exponentially in the last decade or so, but that doesn’t mean that managing the technology itself has gotten any easier.
The to-do list for managers includes inventory tracking technology, automation tech, gathering and analyzing data, coordinating different systems and training workers to use technology properly. The improvements are worth it, but it can be both time-consuming and difficult to get it right.
What is the #1 Warehouse Management Challenge Faced By Warehouse Managers?
Now that we’ve assembled a laundry list of formidable challenges faced by warehouse managers, let’s narrow it down to a single item.
It may be virtually impossible to get a consensus on this, but most warehouse managers would choose labor and their workers as their greatest challenge.
Why? Because you’re only as good as your people, as the saying goes. The best technology, inventory management systems and order optimization procedures will fall short if your employees aren’t properly trained and motivated to use them correctly.
We’ve already touched on a couple of worker management issues, but let’s take a slightly deeper dive into the most important ones.
Start with retention. Keeping skilled, experienced workers is a huge challenge these days, in part because they have a lot of choices in the job market. The cost of training is high, and it’s just as costly to offer competitive wages and benefits. Warehouse workers are also increasingly focused on growth opportunities, which only further the complicates the labor equation.
Safety and ergonomics are just as vital. Warehouses can be dangerous places when it comes to accidents and some of the materials being handled, and it’s important to optimize the workspace to minimize these problems. Implementing an ergonomic design of space, equipment and workstations is essential for both safety and proper workflow.
Finally, let’s at least mention the skills required to manage a labor force. They include communication, collaboration, planning and coming up with having sound management strategies, then using technology and automation to improve performance and job satisfaction rather than replace workers. List them all, and it’s easy to see why warehouse managers identify this as their number one problem.
How to Use Modularity to Find a Solution to Warehouse Management Problems
Using modular storage systems is one excellent way to solve warehouse management problems, but there are other methods you can use, too.
Start with workflow design. Breaking down tasks into modular sections and components can make them interchangeable across different parts of the manufacturing process, and they can be used based on order volumes, product changes, or any other chosen variable.
The result is fewer bottlenecks, greater efficiency and operations that are streamlined according to the basic principles of lean manufacturing.
You can also use modularity to enhance scalability across the factory floor. Indeed, scalability is the ultimate outcome for a modular approach because it gives you a choice of modular solutions throughout the warehouse.
Finally, worker training is another excellent possibility when it comes to using modularity to become faster and more efficient. Employees get to learn different tasks, and managers can create modular teams that master the tasks that have to be performed within certain cells and workstations. The result is happier employees who stick around for the long haul and perform their jobs better as they do.
Use Worksmart and Quixxsmart to Meet Your Warehouse Management Challenges
At Worksmart Systems, we offer a high level of expertise for companies seeking both specific and comprehensive manufacturing process solutions. That includes warehouse management and the challenges it poses, and we also have the equipment and products you need to meet these challenges—you can find those at www.quixxsmart.com.
To learn more about our overall approach, go to www.worksmartsystems.com. Both websites are designed to help you find the ideal inventory management system, and you can also reach us by phone at (978) 356-5000 to get more information and have your questions answered. For Quixxsmart questions, you can call us at 978-536-9992. We’re also available via email us at sales@worksmartsystems.com.
Also Read: Creating Functional Storage Solutions with Modular Rack System
