Whether you choose to use new forklifts or used forklifts in your warehouse or similar commercial space, the key benefit you’ll be looking for will be to improve the overall efficiency of the warehouse.
In this short article 'How Forklifts Can Improve Warehouse Efficiency', we first look at what efficiency in a warehouse is and how that efficiency can be improved, then how a forklift adds to your efforts.
The efficiency within a warehouse is the product of how all the simple or complex tasks that make up your workflow work together. A simple warehouse workflow might look something like this:
Loading and Unloading --> Receipt --> Storage --> Picking --> Dispatch
And, as long as each of these individual tasks blends seamlessly with its preceding task, (i.e. once a product is received, its storage location is simple and quick to locate), the warehouse maintains a high level of efficiency.
Below we’ve put together a list of the key ways in which warehouse efficiency in general, can be improved to help increase productivity and to help create a better working experience for staff overall.
Optimising the warehouse space – To optimise the warehouse space for efficiency successfully, several factors need to be taken into consideration, including how inbound and outbound operations work, and the layout of the warehouse, including the position of pillars and posts, doors and windows, and any other architectural fixtures.
Using the correct storage solutions – Having the correct and most suitable storage solution for your product is an essential component to increasing efficiency (and safety) within your warehouse. This is an especially important factor to bear in mind when choosing which material handling equipment, such as forklifts or pallet trucks to use.
Creating the right pick routes – Whether it’s picking products on foot, by pallet truck, or by forklift, the pick route must be meticulously planned, ensuring travel is minimised, both for productivity and ease of navigation, as well as for safety, and to help improve the working environment and working experience.
By investing in a new forklift or a used forklift, or opting for forklift rental, you greatly improve the efficiency of your warehouse in two key ways, which include:
Increasing productivity: By utilising one or multiple high-quality, well-serviced forklifts to move, stack and retrieve products, you streamline the accessibility of those products, therefore allowing workers to work at maximum efficiency, creating a faster workflow overall, and significantly increasing productivity.
Optimising vertical space: The efficiency of a warehouse relies on both floor space, and just as importantly, vertical space. A decent forklift with a good reach allows you much more scope to utilise vertical space, therefore greatly increasing the warehouse capacity and productivity.
At Beds & Bucks Forktrucks Ltd., we provide a range of forklift financing options, designed to make buying your new or used forklift or fleet of forklifts, easier and more manageable. Contact us to find out more, either via the website, by email, or by phone.
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