Inventory in a material handling or distribution center warehouse can be the annual task we all dread the most. For some of us, it means directing our scant-enough resources to a possible week-long task, while a skeleton crew manages the normal day to day. It can mean hiring additional workers and equipment, expenses we don’t need in these inflationary times.
It’s time to reflect on the year just passed and make plans for getting the most out of the one that’s coming. For those of us in the material handling and warehouse industry, our reflections may follow a certain path and answer some important questions.
Was your material handling or distribution center operation ready for the e-commerce boom? Believe it or not, e-commerce started sometime in the early 1980s. In 1994, Amazon launched and e-commerce took another (giant) step forward. By 2018, e-commerce was raking in $513 billion and those are numbers that make people perk up. But it wasn’t until 2020 that everybody in …
As a business owner, you strive to find the best ways to optimize your processes. In the material handling and distribution center warehouse industries, smooth and well-oiled operations are what we all shoot for in our daily activities. But the nature of business is that we’ll see fluctuations, peaks and ebbs, and constant change. How quickly and easily you can …
In the material handling and distribution center warehouse arena, we can divide our main tasks into three pieces of the pie: receiving, storing and shipping. In those pieces of pie lie a multitude of supporting functions that keep us on track and keep our operations running smoothly and profitably. If anything gets kinked up in the system, the ramifications can …
In the material handling and distribution center warehouse world, we all deal with the ebb and flow of busy and slow seasons. If you’re like most of us, you are currently gearing up to tackle the busiest season of the year – the December holidays. Holiday shopping was primarily done in person before the pandemic: people still went out shopping …
Many in the material handling and distribution center warehouse industry were caught short by the pandemic and the resulting boom in e-commerce. Sure, e-commerce has been steadily rising across the board for years – and many of us were slowly but surely adapting our operations to handle the increase. But the early days of our first pandemic caused a massive …
As the industry comes off another successful National Forklift Safety Day, it’s imperative to reinforce the reasons why this event, sponsored by the Industrial Truck Association, is so important. Every single person in the material handling and distribution center warehouse industry should live by the mandate that “Everyone goes home at the end of their shift.” Industries that use forklifts …
It’s the first step in your material handling and distribution center warehouse operations – and it’s critical to get it right. We are talking about receiving, of course. It’s like the old saying: You only get one chance to make a good first impression. If there is a hangup, faulty guidelines or bad practices involving what happens when the freight …
Efficiency: The ability to successfully complete a task without an undue waste of time, energy, money and energy. It’s the goal of every person in the material handling and distribution center warehouse industry. We spend inordinate amounts of time dreaming of new ways to increase our efficiency. For those who want to succeed in this arena, achieving max efficiency is …