How do you balance speed and safety in putaway?

• Designing a well-organized warehouse layout. • Using technology for accurate and fast item placement. • Training staff on safe and efficient practices. • Scheduling putaway during quieter times. • Keeping equipment well-maintained. • Following strict safety protocols while streamlining operations.

Basically, having a robust strategy for put-away contributes to 99% of your inventory accuracy. If you make sure to place the right inventory in the right place, then your picking process becomes a cake walk. On the other side, if the training system is 50%, then another 50% takes part in training people. People need to trust and abide by the system and process. The nature, volume, and UOM of items play a major role in designing putaway strategies. Once the strategy is configured properly, then the system throws out the best location based on pre-existence (commingle), weight, location type, and material handling, thus resulting in proper inventory placement. This leads to increased efficiency in the put-away process with no errors.

Efficient goods movement hinges on meticulous planning. An updated inventory system is the backbone, providing visibility into availability, locations, and goods' characteristics. A well-defined putaway strategy, employing methods like ABC analysis or FIFO, streamlines assigning goods to specific zones. This proactive approach minimizes unnecessary movements, prevents delays, and mitigates errors. A strategic plan not only optimizes operations but also ensures a seamless and error-free flow in the complex dance of goods within a warehouse.

Planning a putaway operation is precursor to it's execution. While placing stock into the warehouse, it is important to understand how to place if for maximum efficiency while storing and quick removal during picking. This can be achieved by: - Having updated inventory records, to plan better stock placement - Having the correct putaway strategy(FIFO, LIFO, Next Empty Bin), based on the product type and its location in the warehouse, for quick turnaround time - Minimise internal stock movements These factors can help avoid unnecessary warehouse movements leading to reduced delays and errors in warehouse activities.

In capable WMS solutions, algorithms exist to evaluate rules that ensure products go where they must. Where this really becomes powerful is in ensuring inventory constraints are enforced (e.g., don't put items next to other items that cause safety issues) and can also attempt to select locations that improve storage density versus fill the warehouse footprint. Travel is expensive and safety and integrity errors are even more expensive in the long-run.

Making your warehouse operations technology driven can help speed up warehouse operations. A few ways to do that for putaway: - Using barcodes or QR codes with necessary picking and putaway information - Using RFID tags & scanners to automate data entry and reduce errors - Robots, or AGVs(Automated Guided Vehicles) can be deployed for faster and safe putaway - Automating putaway confirmation in WMS

Proper training must be given to shop floor team to ensure that putaway should be proper,faster and quicker. Proper matrix to be maintain to showcase the performance of the team, inorder to boost their confidence simultaneously.