Take a Multi-Faceted Approach to Improvements
You should always be thinking about how to improve your warehouse for you, your employees, and your business and productivity. Successful improvements require you take a multifaceted approach and keep an open mind. Consider the following five strategies when you are looking to improve warehouse productivity.
Offer Employee Incentives
A high employee turnover rate is a poor reflection on you and your company. Turnover can be costly. Some estimates report that each employee lost is up to $10,000 lost when you have to cover training and ramp-up.
Offering worker incentives is a great way to reduce your turnover rate. While teamwork is a huge part of the warehouse, individual incentives are a huge motivator for most people. You can design the incentives as you see fit. Some common incentives include: rewards for the least amount of picking errors, the most on-time shipments, or a good safety record. Warehouse meetings are a great place to introduce the topic of incentives.
Incentives can increase your company’s ROI and make everyone in the warehouse happier and more productive. Your top employees deserve to feel noticed and recognized, and incentives will encourage them to do their very best.
Proper Training
One of the easiest and most often overlooked ways to increase productivity in the warehouse is to properly train your employees. Provide your employees with thorough and engaging training, and update your training agenda as needed. Teamwork and loyalty are only increased with proper training.
Maintain Your Facility
The look and feel of your warehouse tells a lot about you and your company. What do you want it to say?
Your employees do not want to work in a crowded and unkempt space and will fail to feel valued in these conditions. Take action if clutter, dust, disorganization, or poor lighting are problems in your warehouse.
Protect your employees against extreme temperatures with proper organization and ventilation. Safety should always be a top priority. Furthermore, examine your traffic patterns. Consider safety and productivity when reviewing how traffic flows in your facility.
Fair Standards
You should frequently consider the fairness of benchmarks you have upheld for you and your company. Are they reasonable and fair? Make sure the levels are acceptable.
Warehouse tasks are usually easy to measure. When you are establishing key performance indicators, review the data you already have to set your standards. Consult with your employees on this matter to understand what works and what doesn’t.
Investment
There are many tricks and tools out there that will help you increase your company’s productivity and profitability. A good warehouse management system, or WMS, is one example. Moving away from a paper-based system will set your company on the right track for improvement.
In addition, having the right type of equipment is also extremely important. From pallet racks to your material handling machinery, it’s important to invest in quality equipment.
Reduce the burden on your employees by replacing some material handling tools with technology that can, quite literally, take the load off of them. This will also reduce employee injury in the long run.
Know Where to Turn
PFlow can provide you with quality equipment that will keep your team on top of their game. Contact us today for recommendations on what we can do to take your production to the next level.