How To Evaluate Your Warehouse Operations
You need the tools to evaluate your warehouse effectively.
Warehouse operations should be evaluated on a regular basis so that you know what is working and what needs to be improved. The type of software you use can make the process of evaluation much easier because an integrated platform collects all the data from every location and stores it in one database. This gives you both the historical and the real-time information you need to look at the facts, facility, faces, and future of your warehouse management with confidence.
Look At The Warehouse Management System Facts
Evaluations require facts. But those facts need to be in proper context or they are useless. Compiling reports and past performance standards as comprehensively as possible will provide a baseline for comparison. Adding current status updates improves your analysis. When all your data is in one accessible location, you can do things like comparing error rates to changes in operations procedures using a time scale to see possible correlations.
Look At the Facility
Take a walk through the facility and note things like general operating conditions. Look at cleanliness, areas of congestion, lighting, and effectiveness of the layout. Look closely at the reality that your facts represent and note any additional information that should be included in your analysis.
Look At The Faces
The people who are doing the work in the warehouse management system are an important resource for evaluation because they deal with the reality of decisions handed down from above. Middle management gets input from both sides and often has insight on what is affecting productivity and how to resolve an issue.
Look At The Warehouse Management System Future
What is your warehouse supposed to do? Isn’t it to manage, locate, and distribute goods quickly and efficiently? Evaluating how well these tasks are being done now, assessing what could be done to make them more efficient, and deciding how this will be accomplished is a good way to look at the future of your business. You need software that is specifically designed for warehouse management in order to do it right.
ChainDrive’s advanced warehouse management system component has tools specifically designed to aid the evaluation process and implement the facility and procedure changes that will make your warehouse function optimally.
Product location management, productivity monitoring, supply chain management, multiple shipping methods, inventory monitoring, even wireless hand-held operations are included.
Data is important but it’s easy to get caught up in it. I like your suggestion to actually walk around the warehouse and talk to the workers. They usually have the best insights since they’re doing the work day to day.