Tag: warehouse

Improve Warehouse Fulfillment with Powered Tugs

Employees who work in warehouse fulfillment need to locate items and get them ready to ship, loss and unload items, operate material handling solutions, among other duties. You are probably very aware of what these employees do. Much of their work is physical but it also involves the intellect. They need to check inventory to see that it matches up with purchase orders or packing slips, sometimes they need to count inventory and depending on the system at your workplace, they may need to interact with vendors and customers. At the very least, they need to interact with their fellow employees.

Material handling solutions are not just about saving wear and tear on the body; they also prevent the mind from being too worn out. Out-of-date machines that have to be carefully maneuvered to avoid injury or somehow jerry-rigged so they won’t fall apart can cause a lot of anxiety. If your employees work constantly with the nagging fear that the machines they are using are close to the breaking point this may put them on edge. And if they have been injured on the job but don’t want to tell anyone, the aches and pains they feel will compete with the mental processes they need to go through to get orders fulfilled correctly.

DJ Products offers a host of ergonomic material handling solutions, including powered cart pullers and warehouse tugs to protect body, mind, and worker morale. Feel free to contact one of our Sales Engineers at 800-686-2651 to discuss which of our products would be best suited to your warehouse operations.

How to Create a World-Class Warehouse

There are five essential steps to creating a world-class warehouse, according to Dr. Edward Frazelle, founder of The Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech and director of the school’s Logistics Management Series. A pioneer in modern logistics, Frazelle is an industry legend who has trained more than 50,000 logistics professionals and coached countless companies and government agencies in achieving logistics excellence.

  1. Profile. Frazelle believes in creating profiles of every element of a warehousing operation. Profiling order, activity and planning activities makes it possible to identify the causes of problems as well as pinpoint opportunities for improvement.
  2. Benchmark. It is necessary to determine a benchmark for warehouse performance, practices and infrastructure against which comparisons can be made to worldwide standards or future achievements. Benchmark comparisons allow you to determine the need for improvement or new technology.
  3. Innovate. Based on the information obtained during phases 1 and 2, warehouse processes are streamlined and made as efficient as possible.
  4. Automate. Computerize where possible to increase efficiency and productivity. Computerization should focus on simplifying tasks, increase performance and maximize resource use. Mechanize where justified to maximize production and storage density and to assist operators in performing complex tasks.
  5. Humanize. Involve warehouse operators in the redesign process. Recognize individual performance, promote team goals and implement ergonomic improvements in every possible warehouse activity to safeguard your workforce.

The order in which the above 5 elements are applied to warehouse design and redesign is important, warns Frazelle. Keep in mind that:

  • Design adjustments are much easier and cheaper to make in the early profile and benchmark phases.
  • Mechanization investments are less flexible and more expensive than computerization.
  • Protect your workforce. Ultimately your most valuable resource is your workforce. They are your last element of consideration only because your workforce requirements will be dictated by the preceding elements.

Frazelle’s five elements of warehouse development can be successfully utilized to design a warehouse master plan, redesign existing operations, develop requirements for management systems and guide improvement projects.

Simple Measures Can Improve Warehouse Safety, Productivity

The bottom line advantage of improving worker safety was a recurrent theme this past week as businesses celebrated North American Occupational Safety and Health Week. The annual cost to American businesses of workplace injuries and illnesses is $171 billion. Safety improvement need not come at the expense of efficiency and productivity was the oft-promoted lesson.

“When it comes to improved productivity, safety is an overlooked area,” said Michael Davis of Sedlak Management Consultants. “A lot of times, you don’t realize how much a workmen’s compensation claim costs or the hit you take to morale and productivity if someone gets hurt on the job.” Davis suggested four easy fixes for creating a safer, more productive work environment in warehouses and distribution centers:

  • Create designated walkways for pedestrians and equipment. This is particularly important when forklifts or other equipment must share the same floor space with pedestrians. A low-cost solution can be as simple as outlining walkways in yellow paint and installing guardrails to protect pedestrians from equipment traffic.
  • Install an alert system to warn pickers of coming traffic. Mirrors can also be installed to help workers track the activity of others, particularly when picking areas are crowded or are shared by both pedestrian and vehicle traffic. Davis says an alert system can be installed for $1,500 to $4,500, a fraction of the cost of a workmen’s compensation claim.
  • Safety gates that protect mezzanines are required by OSHA. Unfortunately, most safety gates are manually operated and may occasionally be left open. Installing a safety gate that closes automatically better protects high traffic areas.
  • Sensors around automated equipment can protect workers from inadvertent injury. Robotic pickers and palletizers are often used alongside human workers to improve productivity in picking and shipping operations. Davis suggests, “the installation of a light curtain around automated equipment. That’s  a system of photoelectric eyes that create a barrier around the equipment. If the beam from the photoelectric eye is broken because someone is in that area, the equipment automatically shuts off.”