Optimizing the Pick Area for Shipping Operations, from Industry Week.
Shipping and distribution are essential to any company’s profitability. Efficiencies gained in these areas can reduce costs, speed products to market and increase customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, because shipping is often viewed as a non-value added activity, the analysis of what happens (or doesn’t happen) to select, pack and transport goods often gets short shrift during a company’s lean improvement initiatives.
Over the past few years we’ve helped improve shipping operations, electronics companies, and restaurant supply distributors. One element that’s essential to improve each of these diverse businesses? Location, location, location. However, I’m not talking about the address of the facility, but the challenge of where to place the products that will be shipped within its walls.
Reducing the number of feet or yards that shipping personnel travel within a facility to select items for fulfillment is one key method to achieving improvements. How do we do this?
