No matter how efficient you think your warehouse is, the odds are, there’s still some room for improvement. To help you increase efficiency, we’ve put together a list of warehouse efficiency tips to boost your space utilization, weed out ineffective processes, get rid of outdated practices, improve your team’s collaboration, and more.
Remember: any positive changes you make to your warehouse’s efficiency typically lead to cost savings, so it’s always worthwhile to give your warehouse an audit.
Top 6 Warehouse Efficiency Tips
To improve your warehouse’s efficiency, it’s also critical to leverage technology, improve storage practices, and track performance. Read on to discover our six warehouse improvement ideas.
1. Leverage Technology
There are at least four techniques that warehouses can use to boost efficiency, including:
- RFID Technology – By using RFID, you can reduce the amount of time it takes to find items, along with easier inventory tracking.
- Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) – Using a WMS will provide you with important insights and real-time data. Furthermore, it can automate several processes, including accounting, scheduling, and inventory management.
- Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) – AGVs come in many forms such as a forklift AGV and an autonomous picking robot. Getting them to automate material handling will free up your employees for other vital tasks.
- Data Analytics – Studying data analytics will help you optimize your workflows by identifying bottlenecks.
2. Optimize Your Warehouse’s Layout
Many warehouses don’t use an optimized layout. In other words, travel time between commonly purchased items takes longer than necessary, which is a big waste of worker time. Let’s examine four main things you can change to boost efficiency.
- Use Vertical Spaces – It’s critical that you take advantage of your warehouse’s vertical space for storage. Racks and shelves can be installed to ensure your items are properly stored and easier to reach.
- Reduce Travel Time – If two items are often sold together, then it only makes sense to keep them close to each other. Otherwise, your workers will have to waste a lot of effort and time selecting your client’s chosen items.
- Utilize ABC Analysis – Rather than storing your items alphabetically or by category, it makes the most sense to place commonly purchased items near the front. Additionally, placing items that are only occasionally purchased near the back is the best idea. To maximize this time saver, place your most popular items near picking stations.
- Clear Labels and Signage – Without clear labels and signage, your warehouse’s efficiency will plummet. Stop making your workers’ lives harder and place an emphasis on properly labeling everything instead.
3. Improve Warehouse Communication
Your workers need to communicate with each other, instantly. Taking time to walk and find someone to talk to is inefficient and a major waste of time. Instead, use smart radios to keep your team connected, even across long distances.
Smart radios work a little differently than the traditional walkie talkies you’ve probably tried in the past, using W-Fi and cellular connectivity rather than radio waves. Not only are they known for their powerful audio, longer battery life, and reduced dead spots, they also come with modern day features like real-time language translation, GPS location tracking, and an abundance of safety capabilities.
Knowing where people are located and being able to translate conversations instantly, also saves time and contributes to a boosting warehouse efficiency. Learn how manufacturing translator devices boost safety, efficiency, and productivity.
Features you should look for when choosing the right smart radio for your warehouse team:
- Nationwide communications via WiFi and LTE networks.
- Tracking capabilities via Bluetooth and GPS.
- Live translations into more than 30 languages.
- Comprehensive dashboard for alerts and system administration.
- Up to 1,000 channels.
- Push-to-talk group communication.
- Extremely durable and water resistant.
Learn more about Relay’s smart radio for warehouse teams in our on-demand video demo center below.
4. Boost Your Warehouse Storage Practices
Imagine for a second that you’ve got an empty warehouse, and it’s time to fill it up. Which techniques would you use to maximize space? Believe it or not, the specific way you set up your warehouse storage can either save or cost you money. Put the following in place to ensure your warehouse is as efficient as possible:
- Containerization – Setting up a series of containers, racks, and pallets makes it much easier to streamline your storage and retrieval process. It also more efficiently utilizes your warehouse’s storage space.
- Optimize Your Space – Take further advantage of your space by implementing vertical storage, batch picking, and cross-docking. For instance, using vertical space can allow you to store a much higher number of items, which will make your warehouse’s efficiency shoot upward.
- Properly Manage Your Inventory – Another way to boost efficiency is through relying on a proven inventory management system. That way, you’ll always know exactly how much inventory you have. Long gone will be the days when your inventory was plagued by inaccurate stock levels.
- Use Slotting Strategies – Put a slotting strategy in place that uses characteristics, product type, SKU number, etc. in order to maximize your space.
5. Track Performance and Adjust as Needed
Nothing lasts forever, which is why it’s a bad idea to stop paying attention once your warehouse is heading in the right direction. Consider what would happen, for example, if a popular retailer picked one advertisement and used it for several years. While it would initially work quite well, the ad will become less effective over time, until it doesn’t work at all anymore. The same thing is true of your warehouse’s performance and efficiency goals, which means you must keep a close eye on your performance at all times.
- Look for Continuous Improvement – By regularly checking your performance data, you can look for new ways to boost efficiency. Take steps such as making adjustments to your systems and processes. Don’t rest on your laurels, either. If you want to continuously improve efficiency, you’ll have to keep reviewing your performance and making necessary adjustments.
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – KPIs will help you more closely measure your warehouse’s performance by factoring in things like cycle time, order accuracy, and space utilization. If any of these categories comes up short, you should make adjustments, then track them to see if they have a positive or negative result.
6. Focus on Offering Proper Training
Properly training your warehouse employees can boost productivity by 17%. This relates directly to efficiency by leading to cost savings, increasing profitability, and improving overall performance. Here are a few key points:
- Reduces the Consumption of Resources – Minimizing the waste of resources is often directly linked to efficiency. By properly training your staff, it can lead to a productivity increase, along with greater output.
- Saves Money – Taking the time to offer a comprehensive training program to each new worker may seem expensive, but it ultimately brings down the cost of materials and labor.
- Complete More Work in Less Time – When productivity in your warehouse goes up, it will take less time to complete your work. As a result, your team will be able to either churn out more work per hour or work fewer hours. Either way, efficiency goes up.
- Improves Prioritization and Focus – Once your staff’s efficiency improves, you’ll be able to plan more effectively and focus on the things that really matter. Again, though, the only way you can achieve this goal is by offering proper training to each new worker.
- Boosts Profitability – Giving your employees all the tools they’ll need to properly do their job is one of the best ways to achieve higher profits. To put this into context, let’s take a look at Amazon. In 2024, the company made $410,000 per worker. However, they also have a massive turnover rate of 150%, which costs them approximately $8 billion per year.
Why is the turnover rate within manufacturing so high? In part, it’s typically caused by a lack of training, along with high injury rates and demanding working conditions. Businesses like Amazon could boost their profitability by billions if they simply invested more money in employee training from the start.
- Streamlines and Improves Processes – Each time you fully train someone, you’ll also boost company productivity. After all, a trained employee is more likely to identify and eliminate inefficiencies, which will streamline your workflows.
Another vital thing to keep in mind is that a happy worker is a better worker. In fact, happiness boosts productivity by 13%. If you combine this with the impact of proper training, your warehouse productivity could increase by a whopping 30%. It might take longer to show up in your bottom line, but by making your employees happier, your profits will improve.
Tips for happy workers include:
- Improve work-life balance
- Offer training and development
- Show your employees appreciation
- Offer perks that go beyond basic benefits
- Celebrate successes
Warehouse Improvement Ideas Boost Efficiency
Putting the six warehouse efficiency tips listed above into action will not only boost efficiency and productivity, but they’ll also position your warehouse as an excellent place to work. After all, providing comprehensive training boosts efficiency, but you’ll have an even bigger gain if you also leverage technology, improve communications, and optimize your warehouse’s layout. Boost your warehouse storage practices as well, and don’t forget to track your performance so you can make adjustments, if necessary.
Are you ready to improve your warehouse efficiency? Get in touch to schedule a 1:1 demo of Relay’s smart radios. Before you know it, your team will be communicating better, thanks to worker safety alerts, TeamTranslate, operational insights, and more.
