So is your warehouse delivering the cost
and service outcomes that you really like?
Very often it's not the case, and it can
be some very simple things that are
stopping you getting that efficiency
that you're really looking for.
Hi, this is Rob O'Byrne from Logistics
Bureau and what I'm going to do in
this very quick video is to share with
you some of the things that I've come
across over the years that can help you
improve that efficiency. We're just
walking through the park here at the
moment. It's a little bit noisy with the
birds and the flying foxes,
so what we'll do is we'll just go over
there at that little café and I'll share
those tips with you.
Okay, so we found a quieter spot, we're
right next to a Parramatta cafe, they're
not open yet, so we've got time for a video
before grabbing a coffee.
Okay, so the topic is improving your
warehouse efficiency, and how do you know
you need to improve your warehouse
efficiency? Very often, the sort of
symptoms that you'll come across are
things like, we're running out of space,
and that doesn't always mean you need a
bigger warehouse, we'll come back to that in a
second,
it's difficult to find product, you know
the order accuracy is poor, maybe the
costs are escalating in the warehouse, so
let me share with you some of the things
that people tend to get wrong in terms
of warehousing and they'll give you some
ideas on how to improve your own warehouse.
Going right back to designing the
warehouse or finding the right warehouse
to rent, whatever option you're
looking for,
that's generally where people make their
very first mistake. So there's a bit of
background noise, we've got all the early
morning cyclists going through the park here, so
where did they make that mistake?
Well they assume right up front they know
how big the warehouse is going to be and
they go to actually design and build
that warehouse, or rent that warehouse, and you
kind of go and do a little bit of
preparatory work, particularly when you're
building, because you've actually got to
design or select a warehouse by
understanding what you need from the
inside out, not from the outside in.
So what that means is you've got to
understand what you're
going to store in it, how you're going to
handle the product, and then you actually
have to design that storage and handling
solutions and then you kind of encase it
in the building. That's really the right
sequence and where people tend to get
that wrong is they go looking for the
building first without understanding
what's going to be happening inside it.
Okay, so that's just sort of going back to
the design phase. In terms of things that
you can do to improve existing warehouse
efficiency, one of the best
things you can do is slotting.
Now if you don't know what slotting is, you
can do this with software products or
even on a spreadsheet, but it's
basically understanding the velocity or
the demand for each of the products in
the warehouse and then what you need to
do is to actually make sure that the
products are laid out in the warehouse
in the most efficient manner, and that
generally means that the products you're
picking a lot of, your higher demand
products are near a dispatch. Why? Because it
actually reduces the travel time,
reducing travel time, reduces labor hours,
reduces cost, so slotting is a really
good thing to do.
Just a word of warning, you don't want to
put all the fast-moving products in the
same place, because you'll have all the
pickers sort of falling over each other.
Sso that's really important, understanding
the flow, how the product flows
through the warehouse is really
important, and there's all different ways
of doing that. You can have through flow,
or U-flow and I'll come back to that in a
moment.
Understanding the different storage
media is critical too. A number of warehouses
I've been in, and I've been in thousands over
the years, where you kind of walk in and you know
this isn't quite right for their
products. They're using the wrong type of
racking or shelving, maybe they're using
the wrong types of picking technologies,
and so you're really gonna make sure that
the storage and picking methodologies
that you're using actually fit your product
and the throughput of your products. And
in terms of, you know, pulling all of that
together, let me try and help you with
some more information. So, I'll put a
couple of links on this page somewhere
normally they're below or over to the
right, where you can get some more
follow-up information on everything that
we've been talking about.
Firstly on our blog, just go to logisticsbureau.com
and click on the blog icon at the top
right of the page, and there's loads of
articles and videos, all about these sort
of topics that were talking about. And if
you're in Sydney and you're watching
this video as soon as it's gone live,
then actually there's a special treat that
you can grab. We're running a
whole day coaching session on supply chain,
and one of my warehouse designers is
actually running sessions on this very
topic. So, 26th of October, come along
for a whole day of coaching. It's not
sort of presentations from the stage, it's
small coaching groups and I've got 20
experts from industry across all
different topics coming together, it's
$87 for the day, it's a
charity event, the $87
goes to charity, it's fully catered. There's
really no reason not to come.
Well there might be a reason, because there's not many
tickets left. Let me just check my
registration app, and we're down to 21
tickets, so if you want to come along to
that, if you're in Sydney you got 26th of October
free, there will be a button here
somewhere called book now. So that's book
for the event or go to the blog
for further information and I'll
see you at the event or just
wish you the best of luck with your
warehouse efficiency and I hope you can
find more information on our blog that's
really going to help you.