The efficiency of a warehouse plays an instrumental role in the efficiency and cost savings of operations. A warehouse ideally has a loading and unloading area, order packing area, movement and storage area at the minimum (Aalhysterforklifts.com.au, 2013).
Place allocation for all inventory: Sorting, and putting the inventory where they belong is an efficient way to utilize whatever layout plan a warehouse has. In addition, proper segmentation of warehouse is an important part of layout planning. The dynamic areas like picking, put-away, should be separated from the staging area. The shipping and returns area should be entirely opposite to each other.
Segmentation of Inventory: Another important aspect is the movement of goods within the warehouse. The area where fast moving goods are located should be separate from the location where slow moving goods are located.
Use of Hi-technology: The best layout planning should be done with the help of hi-technology warehouse automation equipment, use of warehousing software, voice picking are some of the ways of improving the warehouse performance. Very few retailers have adopted this by now, but if this is applied throughout the warehouse it save a lot of time during order picking. It also reduces the number of employees required for running the warehouse effectively. An efficient warehouse management system should have only two movements per inventory, one in and another out. Reshuffling inventory cause disturbance and wastage of time. If the location of goods are appropriate location and the location is marked with RFID identifiers, picking becomes easier and efficient. This is only possible when goods once picked are put back at the same place until dispatch.
Warehouse layout can be a very important decision, especially for retailers who have an online store and the demands are of significant volume and time-sensitive
Reference
Aalhysterforklifts.com.au,. (2013). Improving the Layout of your Warehouse - Logistics & Materials Handling Blog | Adaptalift Hyster. Retrieved 28 February 2016, from http://www.aalhysterforklifts.com.au/index.php/about/blog-post/improving_the_layout_of_your_warehouse
