If your forklifts are hitting the same pick location every day, something is wrong.
Fast moving items in the wrong location will cost you.
Those costs include:
- Increased selector shorts
- Increased manpower
- Decreased efficiency
- Increased potential for damage
The first common mistake we identified in our last blog post was “Keeping fast moving items in the wrong locations.”
What defines an item as fast moving? This needs to be clearly identified. Without a metric to measure against, you don’t know if you’re improving or not. At my facility, an item was fast moving if it required more than 1 replenishment a week. I personally tried for 1 every 2 weeks, when that was feasible. So what about the wrong location part? If the item had more than 1 replenishment, and wasn’t in the largest feasible slot, it was also in the wrong location.
While reviewing my weekly replenishment report, I saw an item that had been consistently having 8 or 9 drops a week for about 3 weeks now. It’s frozen french fries. They were sitting in a slot 30” high, with 18 cases per pallet. Checking movement of the item showed its average was 155 cases per week. 155 cases a week by 18 cases per pallet means 8.6 pallets a week.
Checking the dimensions on the item showed that moving it to a 45″ tall slot would allow us to hold 36 cases per pallet. That would reduce our replenishments (and putaways) by half. That meant less work for the employees on the floor, and a better use of your space in the warehouse.
What reporting does your company have to identify issues to increase your metrics? What metrics do you monitor for improvement? How often do you review that reporting? We will discuss that some more in our next post.