Efficiency is one of the various areas any warehouse should excel at. Unfortunately, when business owners and facility managers fail to monitor warehouse practices properly, efficiency can diminish greatly. For this very reason, you can accurately monitor warehouse efficiency through simple, beneficial methods. Read this guide to learn three essential tips for measuring warehouse efficiency.
Always Establish Department KPIs
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators. Through KPIs, warehouses provide numerical values to certain work processes as a way of measuring success. For example, KPIs for the warehouse’s receiving area should include order accuracy, processing time, and volume received per hour. On the other hand, the shipping department’s KPIs should include shipping cost per order, frequency of perfect orders, and the number of orders processed per hour.
As you can see, companies can successfully use some KPIs across multiple departments, while others are a bit more specific. By assigning these KPIs to each department of your warehouse, you can accurately measure workplace performance and make swift adjustments when necessary.
Monitor Shipment Delivery Dates
One of the top tips for measuring warehouse efficiency is regularly looking at delivery times. Client satisfaction is essential across many different workplaces, and warehouses are no exception. One of the biggest places warehouses can potentially improve is shipment delivery dates. Getting quality products to clients quickly is always a great way to form great business relationships.
Luckily, there’s a bevy of ways warehouses can work towards improving delivery dates. For instance, there are many ways transloading boosts efficiency immensely, widening a manufacturer’s reach while also boosting delivery speed in many cases. So, even if your delivery dates are currently solid, always consider ways to minimize the time it takes your materials to reach clients.
Ensure Everyone’s on the Same Page
Whenever you implement a new technique or piece of equipment to improve warehouse efficiency, ensuring everyone’s on the same page is crucial. In other words, bring all relevant personal together for a meeting where you breakdown what this new equipment/technique is, how to use it properly in the field, ways it improves efficiency, and so forth. Without the proper training, employees can’t use new equipment to its full potential. Likewise, misusing equipment can diminish its overall lifespan.
