5 Tips to Reduce Your Warehouse Operating Costs

In recent years, improved capabilities to enable faster, more efficient warehouses and distribution centers (DCs) have accelerated the transition to a heavily consumer-centric supply chain. And with 80% of consumers maintaining the shopping behaviors they adopted during the Covid pandemic, this "customer experience" trend has seen e-commerce and micro-fulfillment operations at the forefront. This puts more emphasis than ever on operational efficiency.

We all know the customer experience has dramatically changed, with the "Amazon effect" (more choice and more availability than ever before, delivered faster than ever before) bleeding into customer behaviors across almost all industries. But simply having an easy to use e-commerce store or online ordering portal isn't enough to meet ever increasing customer expectations. Customer experience isn't just a concern for commerical teams any longer, but also a top priority for operations as well - poor customer experiences related to order fulfillment, delivery, and returns can make or break a customer relationship in this new era.

This has seen many companies increasingly look to warehouse automation in order to be deliver processes that can match or exceed customer expectations. But with new investments in streamlining supply chains, this has placed more emphasis than ever on business leaders to deliver operation ROI. We've put put together this simple list of five ways you can make significant savings to your operating cost.

1. Expand your storage capacity without increasing your floor space

Sixty-six percent of facilities are looking to improve their warehouse capacity right now. If you're running out of space to keep up with demand, you probably assume you will have to move to a larger facility, or expand your current footprint. But leveraging the concept of warehouse density means you don’t have to do either of those things. Expanding your facility, moving to a larger building, or adding space is expensive and disruptive to operations.

Most traditional warehouses are laid out in a way that doesn't maximize space utilization. They contain mostly air, above and around the floor plan, making the storage density low. When you consider the open aisle space, empty area above products on shelving, and overhead spaces above shelving (due to human and equipment reach limitations) you find most of the "available" potential space is largely going unused.

Automated storage systems help with higher storage density, helping you to store significantly higher volumes of products in the same space. Cube storage offers an innovative, next-generation version type of technology called automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) pioneered by AutoStore™. By utilizing previously unused "dead air" space, cube storage is able to offer the highest density storage capacity of any warehouse automation technology on the market.

Many facilities implement a cube storage system in stages over time to minimize disruptions to operations. In the long term, many facilities see a reduction in their storage footprint by 75% or more. And in customer experience, this doesn't just mean the potential for better availability with more stock depth, but opening the opportunity for more SKUs as well.

2. Maximize labor utilization - bring the product to your team, not the other way around

In some warehouses and distribution centers, workers can walk up to 15 miles a day (24.14 km) searching and retrieving items. Even with efficient path planning and ride-ons, you are still paying your workers to travel between item picks, and you are missing out on far faster methods.

As a "goods-to-person" solution, cube storage and other technologies can facilitate an automated workflow that allows your team members to stay stationary at a workstation. Product items are fetched and delivered to the worker in the correct sequence for the current order, maintaining a much higher retrieval speed than human workers could manage.

At the touch of a button, the next bin of goods needed is instantly presented. This order fulfillment method can be over 430% faster than manual picking. Orders once taking several minutes to fulfill can now take several seconds. Labor utlization is boosted significantly as their time is spent almost entirely on order fulfillment or other quality checks, instead of wasting time on simply locating items.

With 73% of warehouses and DCs looking to improve throughput and 71% needing to improve picking efficiency, for many operations this may be the single most impactful cost-saving measure on day-to-day operations they could make right now

3. 自動化を活用して予備労働力を拡大し、定着率を高め、不適切な注文返品の処理を減らす

これらはそれぞれ異なるように思えるかもしれませんが、結局のところ、適切なツールを従業員に提供すること、つまり、人間の行動を考慮した人間工学に基づくインターフェイスを備えた適切なオートメーションを提供することと考えると簡単です。

自動倉庫システムは、人間工学に基づいたアクセスポート、インターフェイス、コンベアシステムを備えており、業務をより簡単で遂行しやすいものにします。これにより、多くの人により幅広い就業機会が与えられ、利用可能な予備労働力が拡大します。

人間工学に基づいたワークステーションを作ることで、すべての人にとってピッキングとオーダーフルフィルメントのプロセスがより自然なものとなり、より快適に仕事ができるようになります。また、従業員も一日中施設内を動き回って疲弊する必要がなくなります。このようなメリットは他では得られないものであり、多くの作業員が働き続けたくなるような職場環境作りに寄与します。

適切なインターフェイスは、人的エラーが生じやすくなる要因を減らすのにも役立ちます。毎回同じ方法で注文を処理できるように商品を送り届けることで、作業員は商品が所定の位置にない場合に棚を探すフラストレーションに対処する必要がなくなり、間違った商品をピッキングするリスクを犯すこともなくなります。作業員は、ビンが届くたびに、注文通りの商品が表示されていることがわかります。小分けされたビンに入っている小さな商品については、適切な商品を取り出せるようにライトで照らすことができます。これにより、高速な作業環境でも誤った判断をするリスクがなくなります。

倉庫やDCの52％が注文の精度を高めたいと考えており、55％が雇用および定着に関連するコスト、非効率性、不安定さにより、労働力の削減を検討しています。自動マテリアルハンドリングテクノロジーにより、企業は手作業の必要性を減らすと同時に、予備労働力を拡大し、より理想的な労働環境を作り、プロセスを大幅に改善して正確なオーダーフルフィルメントをより確実に行うことができます。

4. Rethink storage methods to shrink loss and accidental damage rates

Asking workers to be careful and lock doors probably isn't going to cut it. Storing inventory on racking allows a lot of room for expensive errors. Products are commonly damaged when they fall while being retrieved from shelving; goods are typically left unsecured allowing for easy, discreet theft; and inventory can be bumped out of location or scattered, making it difficult to keep count of or identify for an order.

Automated storage systems such as AS/RS solutions mean items are securely located in totes or bins, and stacked tightly inside a storage grid. Human workers don't have access to the grid and are unaware of the locations of specific items. Goods cannot be separated, bumped, or misplaced once they are put inside the bin. Goods can only then be accessed with a recorded robotic interaction to help keep highly accurate inventory counts. When the bin arrives at a workstation for order fulfillment, only the appropriate items for the order are removed while the rest of the goods remain safely secured in the bin.

5. 履歴を調べて単一障害点を回避し、運用リスクを軽減する

どのような機器であれ、いずれは摩損によってメンテナンスが必要になります。予期せぬシャットダウンが発生し、オペレーション全体がストップしてしまうと、大きな損失につながります。システムの一部がメンテナンスのためにオフラインになったとしても、オペレーションを効率的に継続できるようなソリューションを探しましょう。新しいソリューションを検討する際には、システムの回復力を確保するために、一部の機器がオフラインになった場合にシステムがどのように動作を継続するのか、またオンラインに戻すのに通常どのくらいの時間がかかるのかについて質問してください。

機器の耐久性、マテリアルハンドリングソリューションの寿命、およびシステムの柔軟性が実際の用途でどのように持続するかを判断するために、そのソリューションの利用履歴を調べてください。以前からそのソリューションを利用している顧客のサイトへの訪問を要請し、ソリューションの寿命がどれくらいか、ソリューションが時間の経過とともにどのように成長し、ビジネスに適応してきたかを確認してください。評価すべき自動化ソリューションが数多くある中で、これらの質問は、お客様の施設のための長期的なソリューションを選択する際にリスクを減らすのに役立ちます。