A well-designed layout can improve the flow of goods, reduce travel time, and increase space utilization. When configuring your floor plan, you should consider the type, size, and frequency of your inventory.
You should store the most frequently picked items in accessible locations, e.g., towards the front or on lower shelves. You should also group similar items together, classifying items by category, size, or color. This can reduce the search time and improve the accuracy of picking.
Warehouse operations not only face natural disasters but also disruption caused by, for example, power outages, equipment failures, or labor shortages. You should have a backup plan to deal with these situations, covering alternative suppliers, backup generators, spare parts, or contingency staff.
Safety should always come first. You must provide your workers with proper equipment, signage, lighting, ventilation, and training on emergency procedures. You also need to comply with all relevant safety regulations and standards to avoid any lawsuits or penalties arising from accidents or injuries.
Returns are inevitable in any business, but they can also be a source of waste and inefficiency. You should have clear policies and procedure for handling returns, including inspecting, accepting, sorting, and restocking them.
No matter what the size and complexity of your warehouse operations, you can leverage technology to optimize your processes. A priority should be to automate your data collection. Analyzing your current data is essential for improving warehouse operations but, when done manually, it can be a time-consuming process subject to human error.
Technologies such as barcode scanning, RFID reading and voice recognition capture and transmit accurate data quickly and securely. And with this data, you’ve got a real-time overview of your warehouse operations, so you can identify (and solve) bottlenecks and inefficiencies.
Another crucial element to optimizing warehouse operations and reducing costs is inventory management. Thanks to accurate, real-time data, you can keep a close eye on your inventory levels, locations, movements, and status.
You can also implement tools such as demand forecasting, automated reorder points, and regular cycle counts to ensure that you have enough inventory to meet customer demand, but not too much that it causes overstocking or obsolescence.
One of the new technologies that can help optimize warehouse operations and reduce costs is augmented reality (AR). Put simply, augmented reality enhances the real world with digital information and media, such as text, images, videos, and sounds. It creates an immersive and interactive experience for employees, who can see both the real and the virtual elements in their field of view.
Industrial AR solutions such as vision picking are designed to support manual order picking, inventory control, and most other logistics processes.
With xPick, you can tailor instructions and onboarding to the individual preferences and needs of the warehouse team. For example, by providing information in the picker’s preferred language or adjusting number of verifications to match different qualification levels.
And with hands-free and voice-controlled operation with xPick, workers can handle bulky or heavy items safely and comfortably, making manual logistics more ergonomic.
Frontline xPick is a cutting-edge vision picking solution that delivers proven warehouse process optimization. xPick is a patented and award-winning AR software that runs on smart glasses, showing workers the order data they need, when they need it. It reduces errors by providing real-time feedback and verification, alerting pickers if they select the wrong item or quantity, or if there are any changes in the order.
xPick is part of Frontline, TeamViewer’s enterprise productivity platform. The solution can be easily configured and updated to suit the specific needs of each warehouse. And it seamlessly integrates into existing warehouse management systems or other backend systems.
Frontline xPick has been successfully implemented by leading logistics companies across the globe. They have reported significant improvements in productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction.
Proven results include:
Companies can improve pick rates by investing in new technology such as AR, which has been shown to increase warehouse picking efficiency by up to 25%. What’s more, thanks to integrated barcode or RFID scanning, errors can be reduced to almost zero. Overall, AR-based picking solutions, such as TeamViewer Frontline’s vision picking solution xPick, have increased productivity by 15% in some cases.