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Order fulfilment speed is a key metric of warehouse performance. Fulfilment centres, e-commerce warehouses, spare parts facilities, and retail distribution centres must quickly find items, pick them, and ship them to their destinations. One way many warehouses can improve their picking speeds is by using longspan shelving. These units are helpful for more than just storage. They can be used to create smart layouts that drastically increase picking productivity.
Layout solutions can improve warehouse efficiency
A typical solution to overcrowding is to throw in extra shelves, but adding more won’t necessarily speed up order fulfilment. This won’t do you any good if your picking teams waste time walking to reach them. Or if your aisles funnel people into bottlenecks. Thankfully, longspan units come with a lot of options for shelf spacing, load capacities, and aisle widths. Design your layout with your picking teams’ natural movements in mind.
Organising inventory by pick frequency can also significantly cut down on travel time. When planning your layout, think about the paths your employees take. If you place your most popular SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) at the bottom of longspan racks closest to packing stations, employees can grab these items quickly. Next, you could group medium-pick items into aisles close to these fast picks. Lastly, you can place slow-moving items onto the spans further away or even on higher levels.
Consider zoning
While layout is heavily dependent on how your employees naturally work, you can encourage more productive behaviours by zoning your longspan shelving. Zoning is when you section off parts of your warehouse according to item popularity, order type, or priority. Fast-moving inventory should be picked first and ideally kept closer to the packing station. You could dedicate one or two aisles of shelving specifically for these. Medium picks can occupy the shelves next to these, and you could even place your slower-moving inventory on the higher levels of your shelving.
Forward pick areas are also a great way to section off your picking area. These areas typically don’t hold much inventory. Instead, they are small sections that hold the most popular SKUs. These SKUs are constantly being refilled from a reserve area. However, since their quantity in the forward pick area is limited, your picking teams can grab these items much faster.
Group together similar SKUs
Another method to cut down on travel time is by organising your SKUs into similar groups. Let’s say you notice that when someone orders SKU A, they usually order SKU B. By placing them on the same shelving bay, your employees can grab multiple items during one travel path. This methodology also allows you to efficiently batch orders. Instead of sending one employee to pick up everything, you can send one employee to pick up multiple orders at a time.
Labelling and numbering your shelves clearly will also allow new employees to pick efficiently. An organised layout that makes sense will allow teams to find where items are stored more easily.
Maximise vertical storage space
Another reason warehouses run out of room is that they don’t utilise their vertical space. While most facilities will expand outwards, longspan racking allows you to expand upwards. You can customise not only the number of shelves but also their height. Weight distribution should always be taken into consideration when stocking your shelves. Items that are heavier should always be stored from waist level to shoulder level. Try to keep lighter items or reserve stock up higher.
Making use of the vertical space will allow you to store more in less area. The more product you can get into your warehouse, the more space you’ll free up for wide aisles, staging areas, and packing stations.
Maintain ergonomic picking heights
One of the best things about having multiple levels of longspan shelves is the ability to keep your shelves at comfortable heights for your employees. Hurting yourself by twisting, lifting, and reaching over will only slow you down. Too high or too low, and your employees will quickly grow tired.
Good shelf location planning eliminates unnecessary stooping and reaching during repetitive picking operations. This allows for consistent productivity and reduces the chance of cumulative injuries.
Optimise picking routes with data
Examine your pick data to determine wasted travel time. How often are pickers crisscrossing the warehouse to fulfil orders? Analyse order history and pick times to establish trends and problem areas. Then adjust your longspan rack location accordingly. Create more straight-line travel and ease congestion by defining cross aisles. These visual cues or second-level access ways help traffic flow during peak seasons. Revisit your rack configuration regularly to adapt to changing SKUs and order quantities.
Streamline travel with floor markings, directional signs, and colour-coded picking areas. Simple visual cues eliminate second-guessing and picking errors. They also allow staff to travel at optimum speeds when they’re swamped.
Continually improve layout design
As with any part of your warehouse operation, you should always be looking for areas of improvement. Eventually, your business will grow out of your existing storage configuration. You may begin to notice bottlenecks happening frequently. You might also completely run out of space to grow. When problems like these come up, take a step back to evaluate your processes. See what you can improve upon for the future.
Optimising your storage layout is just one way to become more efficient with smart longspan shelving. Proper zoning will decrease travel distance. Stocking like SKUs near each other will allow for faster picks when multiple items are required. Vertical space utilisation will eliminate wasted square meterage. Building shelves to the correct height will allow your employees to be efficient. With these, you’ll have room to quickly process orders without sacrificing safety or scalability.
Keep developing your storage strategy and pair it with solutions like plan drawers when you need to store papers or small parts, and you’ll have a warehouse that keeps up with your business’ speed of service – and growth – today and well into the future.