How to improve warehouse productivity? Preventing accidents, minimising delays and downtime and analysing utilisation and failures could make your forklift drivers and other staff more productive.
1. Preventing accidents
Accidents in the warehouse often occur because of the following:
- Collisions between forklifts
- Pedestrians getting hit by forklifts
- Forklifts were not properly parked
- Sudden brakes or movements of forklifts
- Falling boxes and forklift tipover
- Slips and falls
When any of this occurs, a temporary halt in the whole warehouse operations might be required. This is to know if anyone’s injured and prevent worse damages and injuries from occurring. An emergency medical team might come over. In addition, the management team will analyse the incident and determine the cause.
Just one incident can make everyone accomplish less. With the operation’s temporary halt, the wasted hours might total to 100 (e.g. 2 hours for each of the 50 employees). It’s likely that almost everyone will be affected and temporarily stops with their tasks.
2. Minimising delays and downtime
The core of improving productivity is eliminating waste. It could be in the form of redundant procedures, rework or number of hours wasted on delays and downtime.
Delays and downtime may occur because of malfunctioning equipment (lack of maintenance or improper operation). For example, leaks in the forklift engine may damage the engine and brakes. This may result to a downtime or a delay of carrying the materials (which are needed very soon) to the designated area. This would then push back other activities because the task served as the operation’s bottleneck.
In addition, improper or lack of maintenance can lead to slow or erroneous manoeuvring of the forklift trucks. This could then lead to tipovers, collisions and other accidents. That’s why it’s crucial to adhere to maintenance schedules and the maintenance tasks are being performed by a qualified mechanic.
3. Analysing utilisation and failures
Past mistakes are a rich source of information to improve warehouse productivity. Recording and analysing past collisions can help you prevent the same incidents from occurring again.
For instance, the Optafleet is capable of doing the following:
- Detects impact on real-time (advanced sensor for detection)
- Records the impact data (e.g. Who is accountable? When exactly did it occur?)
- Locates the present location of equipment (fast response to emergencies)
In addition to detecting the impact and responding to it quickly,Optafleet is also valuable for the following:
- Analysing and monitoring usage
- Defining maintenance alerts (never miss on maintenance schedules again)
- Active monitoring of the equipment’s speed, temperature, fluid pressure, travel time and other parameters
How to improve warehouse productivity
In summary, improving warehouse productivity is about minimising delays and maximising opportunities. To minimise delays, accident prevention and timely maintenance are priorities. On the other hand, maximising opportunities could be about utilisation monitoring and making the best use of forklift trucks (timely and adequate rotation).
Here at ShockWatch, we have the right technologies to accomplish those tasks. We have devices that can be mounted on the forklifts and then get connected (through wireless transmission) with the managers’ monitoring systems.
Contact us today and our staff will provide you with smart technical solutions for your warehouse operations. We’ve already worked with small businesses and Fortune 100 corporations.
