We all know the old saying that time is money. But did you know that space is also money? It’s true. If you have empty space in a warehouse, you have to pay rent and taxes for this warehouse. You might also have to pay for lights and heat.
Warehouses are a central component of any business supply chain and as such are frequently targeted by OSHA. A critical responsibility of warehouse managers is the maintenance of warehouse safety. This brief guide will provide you with an overview of OSHA policy as it pertains to warehouses. It will also help you improve the safety of your warehouse, which will serve both to protect your employees from harm and to prevent any OSHA-issued citations or fines.
The most common areas for which OSHA issues warehouse citations are forklifts, hazard communication, electrical wiring methods, electrical system design, wall openings and holes, exits, mechanical power transmission, respiratory protection, lockout tags, and portable fire extinguishers. Forklifts can be dangerous machines if proper care is not taken in their use.
OSHA reports approximately 100 deaths and 95,000 injuries resulting from forklift accidents every year. To prevent forklift-related injury and death in your warehouse, be sure that all of your operators are trained, evaluated, and certified in forklift operation. Be sure that their speed never exceeds 5 mph and that they do not operate in heavily congested areas.
Next, who is in charge of moving your material to the temporary warehouse? Does this staff provide door-to-door service, or must you provide your own transportation? If they pick up your materials from your location, do they also provide order fulfillment services? Do they make deliveries to your customers? If this transportation in both directions, into and out of the warehouse, is provided by the warehouse personnel, this saves your company the headaches of having to set up your own logistics department.
The standards you employ in your warehouse can evolve over time to meet the various functions of the operators and employees who perform these jobs on a day-by-day basis. By allowing your standards to be flexible, you are running your business based on the changing work functions rather than what looks good on paper. It encourages feedback amongst your employees that can be used to determine future operational procedures.
It is essential to look over productivity reports to judge the effectiveness of your warehouse system. A productivity tracking report shows you data that can be used to assess performance, implement motivational programs and chart efficiency. Productivity software can provide this data for the many different aspects of a warehouse, from the department level down to the individual associate. The reports generated by the software can give you an overall assessment of the strength of your warehouse operation.
If you need space for temporary inventory quantities, you may want to rent space in a contract warehouse. The main characteristics to be considered are in the areas of the people who run the warehouse and the characteristics of the space itself.