You Might Have a Bad Warehouse If... You pick from "permanent" storage areas

This bad warehouse is brought to you courtesy of the esteemed Tom Speh, Senior Director of MBA Programs at Miami University. In this bad warehouse Tom witnessed order pickers going to the company's "permanent storage" location, at the farthest corners of the warehouse, to pick cases of product to fill shopping orders. The "permanent storage" area was "suppose" to be for product stored for longer than 90 days, but Tom saw order pickers repeatedly going to pull cases out of the pallets stored there.

If you catch your picking team going the distance (literally) to pick product from "permanent storage" areas, ask yourself just how efficient can it be to make repetitive carton picks from pallets meant to be in storage, instead of from picking locations.

How might this warehouse address their problem better? The Warehousing Education and Research Council advocates using a "Forward Pick Area" or "Picking Module" in a dedicated area specifically designed to enhance order picking operations. It may be something as simple as racks containing cartons (and possibly individual units if you ship that way), or it could be a flow rack area which may even utilize pick to light or voice picking technology. The pictures demonstrate an example of forward pick areas (on the left) and picking modules (on the right).

WERC also recommends the picking area be located close to the packaging and shipping area so that it can operate as efficiently as possible, with the fastest moving items located closest to the pack / ship area to reduce picking travel time.

If you are space constrained and do not have room for a picking module, then at a minimum keep some of the slow moving items in the main warehouse as "primary location" and then replenish as needed from the more "permanent location". In this case consider using the lowest rack spaces down each aisle for storage of broken pallets and do carton picks from there, moving a full pallet down to that area as the cartons are consumed. Keeping the area used for picking cases low can also enhance performance through elimination of the constant rising and lowering of a lift.

Now a word on "permanent storage". If I had my way, I would permanently ban the term "permanent storage". Today's warehouse should focus on distribution and flow of product - not parking it somewhere permanently, even if "permanent" really means 90 days. It's perfectly OK to have more than one slot for your product - but a better and more common terminology is "primary" and "secondary" locations.

For those wanting to learn more about picking operations, we recommend the following resources:

• Read the sections on Slotting, Storage, and Picking and Packing Processes in the WERC "Warehousing & Fulfillment Process Benchmark & Best Practice Guide" available from the WERC Online Store.

• Review Tom Freese's discussion of Warehouse Layout and Design, available at the Freese & Associates website. This article gives a great overview of the basics on warehouse layout (FYI... he agrees with me on the idea of banning "permanent storage" locations)

I really love your feedback - and love you’re contributions to share those bad warehouse stories to help educate the profession on what NOT to do, and perhaps what to do if you’re not doing it.

If you've got an example of a bad warehouse practice, send me your story and photo(s) to [email protected].

If I feature your example in one of my blogs, WERC will send you a free copy of the WERC Warehousing & Fulfillment Process Benchmark & Best Practices Guide (a $160 value).

Your submission can be anonymous if you like so you don't get your boss or company in trouble! I'll be collecting examples all year and the winner will receive a free warehouse assessment by Supply Chain Visions, a $10,000 value. The runner up will win a free conference registration to the WERC conference (a $1,375 value).

Thank you again Tom Speh for your bad warehouse story! We'll get a copy of the WERC Warehousing & Fulfillment Process Benchmark & Best Practices Guides in the mail to you as a thank you for sharing your wisdom and fun!

You Might Have A Bad Warehouse If... Your Forklift Driver Brings Down the House Part Deux

Back in December I talked about the forklift driver in a Russian warehouse who brought the house down, possibly after sampling some of the facility’s alcoholic beverage inventory.

Well in the spirit of there never being too much of a good thing, visually speaking, here’s another shocking example of really bad warehouse layout management and questionable forklift antics.

This short video was provided to us by Jason Morin, which was forwarded to him by a colleague. Neither have any idea where or when this incident occurred.

It’s yet another example of things set up to go way wrong, and of course they almost always do.

The forklift driver had no business trying to squeeze that oversized box through such a narrow aisle opening. What was he thinking? He did show some remarkable speed and agility in getting out of harms way but not a lot of either when it comes to handling inventory.

The layout situation here is also a textbook example of how to create a dangerous and ultimately costly bottleneck on the warehouse floor.

Our WERC Warehousing & Fulfillment Process Benchmark & Best Practices Guide has quite a lot to say about good housekeeping and safety: It’s a crucial element for any best-in-class warehouse. “Product damage can be reduced by setting up separate receiving and putaway staging areas,” the Guide says. “This helps to reduce congestion and traffic flow in receiving, staging and warehouse areas.”

A good idea is to store product as much as possible off the floor, and using pallet flow rails “reduces damage from fork trucks and helps keep staged product organized,” The WERC Guide continues.

The video also illustrates the absence of a slotting strategy, or rules that control how product is placed in an optimum warehouse location. “The goal of slotting is to optimize the use of the building’s cube space and to reduce travel time for putaway, replenishment and picking.”

In this case the narrow aisle slot and the careless driver produced exactly the opposite.

I really love your feedback - and love your contributions to share those bad warehouse stories to help educate the profession on what NOT to do, and maybe what to do if you’re not doing it.

If you've got an example of a bad warehouse practice, send me your story and photo(s) to [email protected].

If I feature your example in one of my blogs, WERC will send you a free copy of the WERC Warehousing & Fulfillment Process Benchmark & Best Practices Guide (a $160 value).

Your submission can be anonymous if you like so you don't get your boss or company in trouble! I'll be collecting examples all year and the winner will receive a free warehouse assessment by Supply Chain Visions, a $10,000 value. The runner up will win a free conference registration to the WERC conference (a $1,375 value).