5 Steps For A Perfect Warehouse Design
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Warehouse design is a crucial part of any company’s supply chain strategy. The ideal warehouse design will provide a fantastic ROI by ensuring that products can be received and distributed rapidly while orders continue to be maintained at a speedy and safe way.
As such, it is important to question how your warehouse should be optimised and what important factors must be taken into consideration.
A regular question asked to our warehouse team is
“what information do you need to quote on our new racking?”
Using our mini step-by-step guide, you will be able to set up the perfect warehouse for your business operations and create a project brief, should you wish to outsource the project.
1. Consider Equipment Requirements
Typical warehouse design may not include the space required for equipment used to transport or indeed lift products. Failing to take this into account can completely alter the proposal for the design making it difficult to ensure that it matches the requirements for any project.
Equipment used must therefore be considered as part of the design from the beginning to guarantee the right level of floor space is provided.
2. Determine What Products Will Be Stored
It’s important to determine the product type that you will be storing within your warehouse when in the planning process. You need to think about everything from the number of units stored to dimensions of individual units and pallets as well as their weight.
This will provide you with the basic details you need to determine the correct warehouse design in terms of storage. Ideally, you need to make sure that there are individual places and sections in the warehouse for different categories and types of products.
3. Explore The Necessary Space And Volume
Within most operations, the number of pallet spaces required for the stored product is the driving force behind warehouse planning. Combining this knowledge with point’s one and two will give you the essential foundation for a perfect warehouse layout.
It’s important to ensure that you are going to run your warehouse in a safe manner. It’s important to comply with all HSE advise and guidelines such as keeping access points clear.
4. Assess The Need For Personnel
Personnel are the engine room behind almost all operations and having the correct balance of resource is critical. With this then comes the responsibility of a management team to provide the correct training and safety information. This could be simple as offering a breakdown of how to use the software that is integrated into the day to day functionality of a warehouse.
It’s important to remember that the health and safety of all personnel is the top priority in all workplaces.
5. Evaluate Product Circulation
When determining the layout and type of storage solution required, product circulation within the warehouse is key. You want to be handling the product as fewer times as possible to ensure you’re running as efficiently as possible.