Five things keeping warehouse managers awake at night

It is no surprise that crisis management can become a daily occurrence as facility operators scramble to stay on schedule in the face of manpower shortages, SKU proliferation, and emerging omnichannel requirements.

We have identified five key challenges.

Curbing forklift operator safety shortcuts  

Lift truck safety is of ongoing concern for warehouse operators, one that is aggravated by high employee turnover rates and increased throughput. Even with operator training and certification being mandatory, truck-related fatalities and serious injuries are still far too prevalent.

Unsafe work habits can become ingrained as employees look to save time by taking shortcuts such as not using seat belts or restraints, turning the truck before lowering loads, or failing to follow facility traffic rules. Correction of “at risk” behaviours as they occur is critical for ensuring safety. When a supervisor sees an operator with a hand or foot exposed dangerously outside of the lift truck operator’s compartment, it is important that the practice is corrected immediately.

Maintaining active operator engagement is also vital to eliminate distracted driving. Attention to safe operation is enhanced through an ongoing mentoring dialogue with supervisors and other workers. A lot of effort goes into a successful lift truck safety programme – a challenge which can be daunting when team leaders become pulled in different directions, and production pressures continue to mount. The only way to totally remove forklift-related risks is through eliminating the need for forklifts. Increasingly, technologies such as warehouse automation are making this a practical option.

Stopping the hiring merry-go-round  

According to the Third-Party Logistics Study, the logistics industry is facing an unprecedented manpower shortage, a challenge which warehouse managers understand far too well. Facilities struggle with employee recruitment and retention, feeling the pinch especially during seasonal peaks. The work can seem physically demanding and dauntingly fast paced for unsuccessful newcomers to the industry, leading to a vicious circle of hiring and recruitment of replacements.

Employers are looking for any edge. A recent survey identified referrals as being the preferred hiring method for job seekers and employers alike. The candidate will come with an understanding of the job, and the employer will have some information about the job seeker’s character and background. After hiring, the new employee often benefits from ongoing mentoring from the referring employee, helping them to acclimatise successfully to the new job and workplace culture.

Referrals are no panacea, however. They can become quickly exhausted, leaving the employer still in a struggle to maintain an optimal employee headcount.

Improving order picking accuracy

Pick accuracy is another one of those “What have you done for me lately?” metrics. It is not appreciated until it takes a dip, and when it does, supply chain relationships can quickly become strained. Accuracy is sensitive to variables such as worker inexperience, increased productivity pressure and broken processes. Performance typically benefits from the adoption of newer technologies such as pick to light or voice pick, as well as weight verification and visual scanning technologies.

A diligent quality assurance programme is needed to ensure the accuracy of manual picking. An active dialogue can confirm there are no discrepancies in the process which are resulting in errors. Additionally, when internal audits discover mis-picks, this information should trigger a coaching conversation. That dialogue should take place as soon as possible when the error is found to aid in stopping additional errors, as well as to identify and correct any process issues.

While such approaches can improve accuracy, a proactive approach involving order picker training, observation, auditing, and coaching must regularly be practised to ensure consistent accuracy. More often than not, however, the resources needed to maintain such manually-intensive quality assurance processes become diverted to address other urgent needs in the warehouse. When this occurs, picker accuracy begins to decline after resources have been removed, creating an urgency to put them back into place to restore accuracy metrics.

Making space for more product

The demand for warehouse space continues to outstrip supply, as facility operators make room for omnichannel operations, increased volumes and value-added services such as the building of customised displayers. For facilities that do not have the luxury of expanding or relocating to a larger building, there are three primary courses of action. These options include lean or “just in time” inventory management aimed at reducing storage requirements in the warehouse, outside storage, or internal facility redesign to increase capacity.

Many facilities have already taken the obvious steps of increasing capacity by introducing narrow aisle or very narrow aisle racking, tunnel racking over cross aisles and racking over dock doors.  Other popular solutions include the installation of mezzanines, carton flow racks, pallet flow racks, or double deep racks and push back racks.

At the same time, on-hand inventories have typically already been reduced as much as possible to minimise space requirements. If such case, warehouse operators are forced to consider other options such as outside storage or satellite facilities to assemble partial orders for cross docking. For a short-term crunch, storage on trailers can provide immediate, albeit costly relief for storage needs.

More proactively, automated storage solutions can now be retrofitted in existing facilities. Given their potential to provide up to a fourfold increase in cube utilisation and facilitate a broad number of SKUs, warehouse operators are now beginning to recognise such systems as the next stage of managing growth within existing facility footprints.

Containing costs

Cost control is an enduring challenge for warehouse operators and one that has become exasperated by the pressures of today’s operating environment.  For non-automated facilities, manpower is the largest cost component. As a result, efforts to boost retention become of strategic importance, as are efforts to improve productivity and improve quality assurance. When the additional demands of omnichannel operations and extra volumes are added to the mix, the need for costly outside storage or an expensive move to a larger facility become more urgent, and the prospects for effective cost control more remote.  Strategies based on bringing more people aboard and moving to larger buildings are no longer practical solutions when the approach is still based on manual material handling.

How to end the sleepless nights

Crisis management has become far too common in warehouse operations. There are, however, solutions at hand that can address all of these challenges and more while providing an attractive ROI.

Over the past decade, automated warehousing systems have proven themselves to be useful in helping existing facilities increase their storage capacity exponentially while eliminating forklift traffic, improving accuracy and dramatically boosting productivity – a feature which allows facilities to increase productivity while reducing their manpower requirement.  Warehousing robotics have become very stable and reliable. Also, because they operate independently, if a robot is taken out of service, the work can be continued with the remaining units.

Automated solutions can be installed in existing facilities, offering up to a four-fold increase in storage efficiency and productivity, while eliminating the headaches of manual material handling.  Such a shift involves a significant cultural shift, however, for warehouse operators who are not familiar with automated systems, and who may worry that they may not have the technical expertise to operate them. According to experts in this area, however, for warehouse operators, the main technical requirement is in the field of information technology, an expertise that most facilities already have mastered in the course of introducing technologies such as warehouse management systems (WMS). As more of their peers add warehouse automation, such concerns are increasingly fading.

With automation, lights can be switched off to save energy as it works reliably in the dark – 24/7. And for warehouse managers, the benefits of warehouse automation can add up to a good night’s sleep.