Material handling is extremely important for warehouses, as it’s the main driving factor of their profits and normal operations. Improving that material handling efficiency with good equipment and strategy is key for a successful business. Here’s a look at some of the materials handling equipment and ways you can improve your material handling practices in your warehouse.
Expanding Efficiency
There are many ways you can improve your material handling, but it always comes down to increasing the efficiency of your processes. You can leverage your equipment, like racking or belt conveyors, to utilize your space more efficiently and make your employees’ jobs easier. Here’s a deeper look into what you can do to increase efficiency for your material handling.
Ways To Raise Productivity
The first thing you should focus on when looking at material handling is raising the productivity of your process. There are many ways you can improve your warehouse to increase overall productivity. Things like the layout of your warehouse and what you invest in, here are a few overarching things you can change for better handling.
Look at Your Design
The overall design of your warehouse, and specifically your storage area, should focus on improving how you tackle materials. Designing a space that maximizes how much equipment you can fit and placing that equipment in your space to eliminate waste is a great place to start.
Invest in New Systems
Material handling is difficult to manage and improving it isn’t always possible if you don’t make the right investments. Purchasing and installing new systems, like belt conveyors or material handling racks, can make a huge difference in the productivity of your warehouse.
Automate What You Can
While workers are necessary for material handling, they aren’t vital for every job and there’s a lot of equipment that can do their work better. From automatic picking equipment to inventory management software, you can make a lot of jobs easier for your workers so that they can focus on the more important tasks around the warehouse.
Ways To Improve Safety
One major concern for a lot of warehouses is the safety of their workers, as material handling can cause a lot of harm if done incorrectly. From simple falls to repetitive stress injuries to breaking equipment, your warehouse may cause injuries during regular use. Here are some methods to prevent these injuries as best as possible.
Give Workers More Space
While maximizing the space you have and using every inch for storage may sound good, workers need the space to navigate the area safely. This is especially true for any heavy machinery that’s necessary for loading and picking materials, like forklifts. They can be destructive if not given enough room.
Invest in Safety Equipment
Another great way to improve safety in your warehouse is with proper investment in material handling equipment that focuses on both safety and efficiency. A lot of belt conveyors and high-density storage solutions not only make things easier in your warehouse but also help improve the safety of workers. When you’re looking at material handling equipment, always be sure that it also increases worker safety.
Run Frequent Inspections
Any warehouse can benefit from preventative maintenance, which works to prevent accidents before they happen rather than responding to them. The first step of this is running frequent inspections of your equipment and warehouse for any potential dangers. At least twice a month, you should go through your whole warehouse looking for any damage or worn equipment and determining whether you should repair or replace it. This will keep your workers safe from a lot of common injuries around the workplace.
Ways To Improve Material Handling
When it comes to improving your material handling, there are many ways you can do this. From implementing best practices to improving your equipment, you can choose many options to improve material handling. Here’s a deeper look into some of the methods you can use.
Lessen Interactions
One of the most important things to do in material handling is lessen the times people/workers interact with the material. Every time a worker needs to move or interact with a material, it raises the costs of production. Try purchasing equipment that eliminates the times workers need to interact with materials, like racking that can pick and load materials without workers.
Get Specialized Equipment
Workers need to move and work with a lot of materials if you don’t have the equipment that can handle the right processes for them. For example, material that needs heating usually needs workers to move it to the heater, but specialized equipment can move the materials for workers. Always be on the lookout for equipment that can help you process materials and help workers do it with as little effort as possible.
Decrease Downtime
A lot of warehouses lose efficiency because things breakdown and take a long time to fix. Preventing or reducing that downtime is important to increase your efficiency. You can decrease downtime with preventative maintenance and keeping spare parts of your equipment nearby. This will prevent breakdowns and make repairs quick and easy, increasing your worktime.
Ways To Enhance Worker’s Ability
One of the last things you can do to improve material handling efficiency is improve your worker’s ability. Skilled employees are the driving force of productivity and proper investment into your workforce will only return more efficiency. Here’s how you can improve your workers and make their job easy.
Training for Workers
Invest in training for your workers, which means mandatory and optional trainings for both safety and workplace skills. Teaching workers best practices around the warehouse will prevent accidents and confusion during regular warehouse operations.
Automate Dangerous Jobs
When it comes to the most dangerous jobs on the work floor, automation can prevent a lot of worker injuries and help workers avoid incidents and accidents. When a task proves to cause frequent injuries or repetitive stress injuries, then it’s time to look for the right material handling equipment for your warehouse.
This is how you can best tackle your material handling in your warehouse and improve your warehouse overall at the same time. By investing in the right equipment for your needs and implementing best practices you can make your warehouse a powerhouse of productivity and efficiency.
