During these precarious times, most small and medium businesses are standing on their last leg. As the situation demands, business owners are scrambling to save pennies and bucks from here and there and burning the midnight oil to make ends meet.
The year 2020 is certainly going down in history for making us witness the worst economic hit and health crisis in over a century.
Proper material handling and storage solutions can improve production and efficiency, enhance workplace safety, and even reduce inventory waste. Services help you keep your workstation organized with the right tried-and-true material handling and storage solutions for your industry, whether you’re managing a big warehouse, a large mining operation, or a busy suburban healthcare practice. Read this content!
But there’s light at the end of the tunnel
If your warehousing operations aren’t tallying up with your revenue goals, you need to stop burning the candle from both ends and take measures to minimize overhead so that your bottom line does not suffer. Services like those offered by 3pl melbourne can help navigate your needs during these difficult times.
Here we bring five tips to reduce warehouse costs without cutting corners.
Optimize Storage
Since businesses are running lean, it’s time for warehouse storage to shrink. If you have a rented facility and pay by square feet, you can reduce the cost by optimizing storage.
Building narrow, tall racking while ensuring adequate forklift access is one of the straightforward ways to reduce space. But don’t forget to factor in the safety requirements. A poorly built racking system can collapse at the drop of a hat.
Aisles make navigation easier, and when created smartly, they can help reduce the amount of space they take up. Start by sorting your inventory by aisle dimension needed for forklift access and reduce the aisle width wherever possible.
Safeguard your inventory
Misplaced, stolen, or damaged inventory accounts for billions of dollars of losses every year. Spending a little extra on packaging procedures can avoid any kind of unintentional stock damage, saving you a big fortune in the long run.
Product misplacement and theft can be avoided by deploying guards at key entry points and making use of RFIDs to restrict or monitor access. If your warehouse remains shut for more than 1 hour, consider installing CCTV cameras and burglar alarms to deter those prying eyes. This will be a one-time investment that can prevent losses worth thousands or even millions of dollars.
Cut out the middleman
It’s the need of the hour. And you can achieve this by cross-docking. There are certain goods that require minimal or no warehouse processing and can be sent out for delivery as and when you receive them.
Transferring the goods from your incoming transportation vessel to the outbound vessel for customer delivery will eliminate the time and resources required for warehouse storage and retrieval.
Cross-docking also saves the cost associated with labor, storage, and product management.
Maintain your forklifts
Repairing forklifts might be an overwhelming expense during these trying times. Therefore, preventive maintenance can go a long way in eliminating hefty repair expenses and downtime.
It is crucial to service forklift transmissions regularly and change motor oil plus other essential fluids every three months, to keep your forklift operating without breakdowns.
Forklift accidents can have costly consequences; thus, it is advised to have an experienced, skilled operator on board.
Buy used containers
By purchasing used containers as compared to new, you can reduce the cost by up to 40%, which is a lot of money considering how expensive new containers are. When you go for used containers, always pick the high-quality ones and buy from a reliable vendor.
Why not buy directly from a business? A majority of companies try to dump their defective or damaged containers at cheap rates. On the other hand, vendors inspect and refurbish every container so that the next owner can make the most of it.
Following these simple tips can help you run and manage your warehousing operations cost-effectively. If you’d like to go a step further, you can improve your warehouse’s insulation and install windows for natural light to come in. This can help reduce energy overheads significantly.