Pallet Control Saves Money

A necessity for warehouses and at a unit cost of $2 to $80 for each pallet, loss and damage of pallets can add up very quickly and adversely affect your bottom line. Whether you purchase pallets or lease them from a company, it is essential to have a method of tracking them.

There are organizations that lease and manage pallets used by your organization. Pallet reconciliation is an important aspect of money management. They control activity with suppliers, haul, maintain, retrieve, dispose, and set up delivery points. In addition to tracking lost pallets and managing the redemption of pallets, Methods include manually counting the pallets, bar coding, radio frequency systems, and transmitter tags.

Some systems can track pallets anywhere in the worlds. Ultimately, this saves your organization an enormous sum of money by reconciling found pallets to invoices in order to maintain accuracy.

Whether you use software specifically designed for pallet management or a pallet management company, the concept is the same. Tracking pallets is an important aspect of maintaining costs. If you are unsure of how to approach this area of your business, then consider hiring a consultant to help you.

What Kind of Pallets Can You Use?

In virtually every country, state, manufacturing, warehouse, and third party logistics company you will find pallets used. There are multitudes of pallets to choose from depending on your needs.

Pallets are made of a variety of materials: each will provide a different level of strength and longevity. For instance:

Wood is the most prevalent and tends to be most affordable. Load capacity is about 2500 pounds and can be used 2 to 15 times before needing to be repaired. Drawbacks include moisture retention, warping, and splintering.

Plastic pallets have a load capacity of 1400 to 4000 pounds and can be used around 250 times. Drawbacks include warping because of weather exposure and cost tends to be on the higher side at $80 per unit.

Corrugated fiberboard carries approximately 1700 to 4000 capacity, is disposable, and runs at $5 to $7 a unit. Unfortunately, it is only good for one trip.

Metal is made from aluminum and stainless steel, can hold upwards of 5000 pounds, and can be used for up to 500 trips. Unfortunately, it is pricy. The price per unit can run as high as $250 per unit.

Prices vary depending on quality, quantity, and whether or not you use on outside source to provide the pallets or you purchase them directly.

Pods Warehouses

Whether for personal use or to meet the needs of business requirements for short or long-term storage, an alternative to the do-it-yourself storage that requires you to move either inventory or other materials via a truck and heavy lifting is the use of pods. An emerging trend is the use of pods, which is a container unit available in a variety of sizes to suite your storage needs.

What’s Nice?

• The pods are dropped off and picked up by the warehouse facility, which alleviates the worry of transportation.
• Although, the pods are stored in a warehouse facility, they are whether resistant
• The climate in the warehouse is controlled by using air conditioners and de-humidification systems
• The warehouses are under strict security and only you have the key to enter your pod
• They are portable, so they can be moved to the location of your choice at your convenience
• Do not pay for more square footage than necessary. Rent only the size pod that you need to accommodate your inventory or materials
• Can hire the warehouse to pack and unpack the pod

Warehouse storage has become much more flexible in the effort to meet the varying needs of the customer. If you are moving, have over stock in inventory, are remodeling, or relocating, there are alternatives to the typical self-storage warehouses of the past.

Team Building

Whether in a corporate office or warehouse environment, essential to any organization’s success is the ability of staff to work together. Essential to this task or opportunity, however you would like to look at it, is a strong leader that can be impartial and show common sense when dealing with employees and team building.

Each individual has their own sets of experiences, values, and personality traits, which influence how they interact with their coworkers and managers. Often if left to their own devices, employees are attracted to like-minded associates making it difficult for a truly integrated department or organization to share the same values concerning the success of the company.

Team building can take many forms, which could include personality assessments and group discussions of the results. This tends to be a great way to gain a good understanding of a coworker’s reactions and motivation. Other forms of team building can include volunteer work for a common cause or just going out to lunch to enjoy time away from the office or facility.

Team building does not have to cost the company a lot of money. Ultimately, any investment whether financially or time is well worth the rewards reflected in improved moral, communication, understanding, warehouse services, and ultimately profitability.

The Use of an Interactive Voice Response System in a Warehouse

Undoubtedly, there is a use for Interactive Voice Response (IVR) in your warehouse distribution center; particularly if you have high call volume and would like to extend the service provided to your customers. An IVR integrates well with Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) systems, which uses caller identification or passwords to extract information from the customer.

IVR allows you to service customers by providing an extension to your call center. An automatic attendant detects your answer via voice or keypad entry thereby processing the pre-recorded voice commands by answering your questions, providing services such as purchases, payments, or directing the customer to the appropriate agent for further service. Responses can be in the form of voice commands, fax, callback, or call center forwarding.

This additional service can be an added benefit to your organization if it is constructed well to provide additional customer service to your client rather than put them in voice mail hell. The system should not be complicated to use, needs to be customer centric, and flexible enough for individuals that have an accent to use. The repercussion of a poorly designed system causes your customers a great deal of frustration, which ultimately results in loss of customer satisfaction and business.

If you are interested in acquiring an IVR or CTI system for your warehouse distribution center, contact various warehouse companies that specialize within your industry and ask for recommendations for vendors, information about customer satisfaction, as well as effectiveness. Research several vendors and consider the industries in which the system provider has provided service in the past.

Warehouse Clothing

The proper clothing is an important consideration for your employees to ensure their safety as well as comfort. The type of clothing required depends on the activities within your warehouse. For instance, if your workers handle food in sub-zero conditions, it is recommended that you provide jackets and bibs that are specifically designed to protect them from cold, harsh environments. If your laborers work in an environment that exposes them to high heat, then it is recommended that you provide him or her with clothing that is flames resistant

It is essential that the clothing supplied meet the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA) requirements. The variety of clothing includes bibs, jackets, safety colors, gloves, shoes, etc. Consider the following when making your decisions:

Flame resistant clothing coated with a special flame resistant coating should be used for employees that may be burned by electricity, work with oil, or flammable material.

Laborers that are exposed to low temperatures such as freezers should use jackets and bibs that are quilt lined and made with arctic weight nylon.

High visibility clothing such as safety green, yellow, and orange with reflective tape is available for employees that place them in a situation that in which they are not easily visible.

Hand protection is available for any number of uses such as driver gloves. Gloves made of neoprene are specially designed to protect against heat and acid burns. Gloves made from Kevlar or steel thread are excellent cut resistant protection.

You also have a number of choices when it comes to the type of boots needs. For instance, they should be slip resistant, but is toe protection also required?

The above is just a smattering of what you need to think about when considering the proper attire required to protect your employees. Review the requirements through the International Safety Equipment Association to ensure that you are within safety compliance.

Include Key Performance Indicators Along With Financials

Many warehouse and supply chain organizations emphasize the balance sheets and forget about the non-financial aspect of measuring productivity. In order to get a fully encompassing view of your organization, it is recommended that you include non-financial metrics like Key Performance Indicators (KPI). The use of both financial statements and KPIs helps to control performance by measuring any number of indicators within your warehouse or supply chain. It should be targeted, systematic, and have the ability to display the results graphically. One of the most important aspects of using a KPI is to have a benchmark from which to make a comparison. Your numbers will not mean much if you have nothing to compare them to.

To run an effective supply chain, it is recommended that you measure inventory, suppliers, and customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction metrics include such areas as shipping accuracy, re-orders, customer service response, and overall contentment with service. Inventory metrics can include cycle time, inventory levels, loss from damage, and lead-time. Supplier metrics may include such performance indicators like quality, accuracy of orders, shipping cycle, and defects.

Ultimately, the goal is to create metrics that are as accurate as possible. Better accuracy results in less inventory requirement, shorter inventory to cash turnaround time, and overall better financial performance.

There is no doubt that there is a direct correlation between financial success and the use of metrics to measure both a balance sheet and key performance indicators. It is not necessary to begin with a sophisticated software program if you do not have the financial resources when starting out. Consider using an excel spreadsheet to get started until you can afford to institute a more sophisticated system. The important thing is that you begin measuring performance now.