Even though there are many businesses who start employees in the receiving area, they will be much better off to assign professionals to deal with the put-away jobs. Experienced people who understand and know the products rarely mix things that are similar in appearance but are quite different and they know how to correctly stock shelves and bins and thus, work much more efficiently.
It is a great idea if you have new employees to start them out by filling orders. This provides them with an excellent chance to learn the products, paperwork and customers along with any electronic inventory system that can take some getting used to. Moreover, it is easy to check their efficiency by going over their work orders when they are packed for delivery.
As you do not want to have a lot of trucks arriving at the same time, the next step is to plan truck arrival. By being organized and planning arrivals, you would eliminate too much waiting time in the yard and also eliminate pressure on shippers and receivers. The more efficiently you could plan the arrival of your trucks, the less dock doors you would have to operate which would really save you money on utilities in the long run.
Work with different shifts for shipping and receiving. If you can, receive goods during one shift and separate your shipping to a different shift. Organizing yourself in this manner can enable you to reduce the staging area needs by 50%. You may also be able to eliminate time-wasting bottlenecks within the warehouse. Additionally, by separating your shipping and receiving, you could keep track of orders more efficiently and will know which shift to look over if any discrepancies occur down the road.
Speed up the unloading process. This will really help you out because the longer a truck sits at your door for unloading or loading, the more congested your yard could become. Based on studies, about 60 percent of mass merchants can unload trucks in less than an hour, while around 20 to 30 percent of the grocery industry works at a similar standard. Take time to observe and time operations to be able to see exactly how your facility measures up overall.
Maintain your floors because any defects in the floor's surface could cause a lift truck operator to take a detour or slow down. The uneven floors could greatly decrease productivity. Potholes or deteriorating floor section seams or uneven floors also result in vehicle damage and wheel wear. In some situations, really damaged floors can cause loads tipping and product damage.