Warehouse Slotting and Its Importance: Macro vs Micro Slotting
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Warehouse Slotting
Warehouse slotting is an inventory management technique that may significantly improve your operations’ efficiency. Prior to diving into slotting, it’s critical to gather data about your previous sales. Additionally, you should be familiar with the storage and handling requirements for fragile and heavy objects. This enables you to optimize storage and manage your products more effectively.
Warehouse slotting is a method of structuring a warehouse in order to utilize available space and improve picking efficiency. Slotting well can also help streamline inventory management operations and save overall warehousing expenses. Slotting is frequently structured by SKU number, product kind, or any other attribute of the product.
While the fundamental notions of slotting warehouses are straightforward, highly effective slotting is difficult and needs some math. The work will be aided by software equipped with slotting warehouses algorithms. You might begin by performing some simple calculations on a spreadsheet. You should be prepared to automate some of these judgments as your operations expand.
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Macro Slotting vs Micro Slotting
Macro Slotting
The location of the facility’s pick zones must be taken into account for macro slotting. Warehouses need to have high throughput architecture with little congestion in the receiving and loading sections if clients want a two-day shipment today.
Micro slotting
Items and pallets are arranged in picking zones in a micro slotting manner. For instance, what is the best way to arrange objects on a shelf?
Workers’ health and safety are the most directly affected by the effects of micro slotting in the warehouse. Putting heavier things on lower shelves, for example, might lead to workers being forced to bend down to pick them up, which could lead to repetitive stress injuries.
Why Is It Important to Slot Your Warehouse?
- The goal of slotting inventory is to maximize storage space and efficiency.
- The most common methods for securing warehouse space include:
- Increasing the efficiency of warehouse space
- Incorporating SKU velocity into the selection of appropriate storage technologies
- The handling of pieces is minimized.
- Search and transit times to items can be reduced to increase productivity.
- Managing the flow of work.
- Improving the correctness of the inventory.
- Enhancing the ergonomics of workers.
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Benefits of Proper Warehouse Slotting
It’s more important to your company’s profitability to optimize your inventory storage than you would think. The importance of slotting warehouses for eCommerce cannot be overstated. That will allow you to give slotting the attention and time it deserves. Some of the advantages of figuring out a workable slotting technique include the following.
Movement Economy
The storage of high-volume items near the packing station reduces the time it takes pickers to return and forth from the shelf to retrieve the same SKU off the shelf hundreds of times each day, saving time and money. The SKUs with the maximum velocity are just in front of them.
A Way to Make Space
Have you ever noticed how a congested area appears to be confined and cluttered? However, when everything is in its proper position, the room appears to be more spacious…despite the fact that the same amount of “things” is present. On the other hand, better slotting results in more organization and more room in a warehouse since the total area is being used efficiently, which is the opposite of what happens in a retail store.
Picking is More Efficient, and Picking Mistakes are Reduced
Slotting correctly can increase picking accuracy by removing any potential sources of misunderstanding for the picker. Storing things in the most logical manner for the picker (e.g., by kind, size, weight, etc. ), it enables faster selection by eliminating the guessing associated with the location of certain items. Thus, pickers may concentrate on speed rather than wasting time locating the correct item.
Prevents Item Damage
The effective storage of products reduces both the amount of traffic that passes through the aisles and the number of times each SKU is touched. As a result, there are fewer opportunities for products to be damaged while in transit within your warehouse.
Equipment Utilisation That is Efficient
It’s a recipe for traffic bottlenecks and wasted time to place popular products close together that need various types of equipment (such as a forklift next to a cherry-pick).
Reduce the Amount of Time Spent Traveling
Reduced travel time is an advantage that adds to, but is separate from, quicker choosing in terms of productivity. Even if a worker knows how to go to a certain object, such information is useless if the route they choose is inefficient.
Efficiencies are noticeable when employees must travel far back into the warehouse to get a quickly moving item or when workers must collect things from opposing ends of a single-aisle in a matter of seconds. These inefficiencies are eliminated as a consequence of improved slotting warehouses, which results in faster picking and faster replenishment.
Increase Visibility
Employees might be picking and delivering items at the time they are looking at their clipboard or iPad for an item. Effective slotting increases staff productivity by allowing employees to quickly identify things. This approach enables facility managers and personnel to promptly recognize when an item is out of position, hence minimizing the potential of mistakes.
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