3 Important Tips to Improve Warehouse Efficiency

This is a guest post by guest contributor Tom Reddon.

Are operations dragging in the warehouse? Are routine tasks seeming more and more demanding? Are workers struggling to get typical assignments done? Are projects taking longer than usual to complete? 

If the answer is yes to any of these questions, your warehouse operations may be having significant issues. But there is good news! There are several ways you can change the culture of your warehouse and enhance both productivity and efficiency in the daily grind. 

Here are three important tips to take into consideration to boost your warehouse efficiency.

Go For Constant Process Optimization  

We may not always realize it but we can always do the same task or job better and every day we should dedicate ourselves to finding ways to complete an assignment faster, swifter and more extensively. Dedication to process optimization can result in increases in efficiency and productivity while assuring the promotion of a transformative and progressive work environment. 

Process optimization is actually something many supply chain and procurement managers promote in material handling capacities. Through consistent analysis and on-going scrutiny of daily business processes and operations, staff and personnel can establish continuity in achieving results and then devise new approaches and methodologies to exceed these achievements while also determining ways that are easier, safer and more effective in doing so. 

It is important to always be looking at active processes and identify ways to improve them as this mentality will almost always bolster success.

Cultivate A Transformative Work Culture 

According to Chron, a positive work culture is vital to the success of any enterprise or business. For many, employees are more likely to succeed and get positive results if they feel respected, appreciated and have a sense of belonging. A strong team-oriented attitude in the warehouse is known to enhance communication and it has been proven that many incidents which hamper both safety and efficiency are often a direct result of miscommunication. Supporting a transformative and progressive work culture is a great way to drive efficiency while also enabling the workplace to be positive and supportive.

Look Into And Adopt Six Sigma Or Lean Manufacturing

In material handling capacities, Lean Manufacturing or Six Sigma Methodologies have become a highly commoditized trend. A by-product of a technologically-driven era, Lean Manufacturing merges traditional best business practices with the integration performance metrics and analytics that catalyze business in the modern day. Six Sigma champions the optimization of inventory, devises methodologies to improve efficiency and also identifies ways jobs can be less labor-intensive while also reducing risk. “Work smarter, not harder” is a great mantra to describe the ideologies of both Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing approaches.

With the recent emergence of such methodologies, many workshops have been authored and integrated into the workforce and virtually any employee can gain a wide range of practical knowledge to apply in their daily duties. Comparable to training for martial arts, there are multiple levels of expertise that one can attain. As a result, employees can earn various certifications that serve as a benchmark of expertise. For example, any Six Sigma Champion can assuredly be a boost of both productivity and efficiency in even the most dynamic and challenging of environments. 

Tom Reddon is a forklift specialist and blog manager for the National Forklift Exchange. He also sits on the Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association (MHEDA) Executive Dialogue team. 
Follow him on Twitter at @TomReddon

Cards: The Right Info At Your Fingertips

A little while back Megaventory announced its brand new User Interface. With the modern entrepreneur in mind, we came up with the idea of 4 dashboards - one for each of the major functions we address in a company: Purchase, Sell, Manufacture, and Inventory.

Depending on your business operations you can choose to access one, some or all of these dashboards. This helps simplify things by hiding unnecessary information and also protects certain data from unauthorized access. As Megaventory supports multiple users and restricts their access to specific parts of the application, you can also customize the application so that the right people see the right information. This helps you keep your data safe from prying eyes and also makes day-to-day business smoother: employees are not bothered by info that has nothing to do with their job.

Pre-filtered Cards

However, you can further customize dashboards using one key element of these dashboards: the pre-filtered cards.

The dashboards in Megaventory are made up of various pre-filtered cards. Each one of these cards is essentially a custom view that gives you access to a pre-filtered document or order list. You can create cards so that you can quickly revisit these lists without having to filter again. And once made you can also share them with other users on your account – and save them some work.

Using the cards: an example – taking Quotes

Your sales team is going door-to-door talking to potential clients and taking sales quotes – which they enter directly into Megaventory via their smartphone or tablet. Your team can set and they will be able to see the “Sell” dashboard with cards like: All Quotes, Quotes of this month, and maybe Sales Orders if it is their responsibility to create Sales Orders as well.

Processing Orders

Another team is sitting at their desks in your headquarters, verifying sales quotes and turning them to sales orders, opening new orders for walk-in customers, and shipping any order that is ready. It might be crucial for them to see information like what invoices are to be paid next week and which orders have yet to be shipped.

Monitoring Everything

And then there’s you, the manager. With Megaventory you can have a total overview of all these processes – as well as some others which no one else has access to. That way you can be in total control of your business. Is this awesome or what?

Summary

So, that was a quick overview of how you can use the pre-filtered cards to save up a lot of time in your day-to-day business and make your team efficient by showing them only the information they need. The possible combinations are countless and we are certain that you’ll find the ones that suit your unique business.

If you have tried out Megaventory’s cards let us know in the comments below or tweet us!

Or if you haven’t tried Megaventory maybe now is  a good time to upgrade your inventory management system?