Are you looking to reduce warehouse expenses, trim production cost per order, increase productivity and improve labor savings in your warehouse or distribution center?
More than ever, distribution professionals are being asked to trim shipping and packaging costs while maintaining top-quality production and speedy customer service. Even in the “best” operations, there are still improvements to be made. Hughes Enterprises has put together six simple and effective tips you can use today to cut costs for a more productive operation.
1. Reduce Errors with Automation
Improve the overall quality of your operations and in return you’ll reduce expenses. Collect error rate data and then set some targets to reduce them. By bringing automation into your production line, human errors are significantly decreased. Regardless of your industry, automatic packing equipment technologies will increase efficiency and accuracy and reduce overall errors.
2. Focus on Labor Savings
Labor is a significant contributor to overall warehouse management expenses. By integrating automation within the distribution center, labor savings can be maximized and long-term profits will skyrocket. You’ll not only increase efficiency on the packaging line, but also decrease employee repetitive motion injuries. Automation allows companies to reassign human resources to more productive areas such as customer service, product design and quality control.
3. Assess Technology
Replace older (lower-energy) systems that cost more to operate with new (energy-efficient) machines. Take a fresh look at each step involved for your packaging process and see where product flow and order fulfillment can be improved. The more a product is moved, the greater the potential for damage. On the other hand, the fewer touches of a product, the less amount of time and costs to ship an order is required.
4. Save on Energy Costs
Due to the size of a distribution center, even small improvements can have a large positive net effect on the bottom line. Reduce energy expenditure costs with some simple fixes such as installing timers and sensors so that lights turn off when the room is empty, setting a programmable thermostat, repairing gaps in the seals around loading-dock doors, replacing existing light bulbs with energy-efficient bulbs and ensuring equipment is only used when needed.
5. Reduce Materials
Inefficient packaging designs can not only be costly in materials, but also affect DIM shipping rates. Our eco-friendly packaging solutions offer companies more ways to reduce material costs and also their carbon footprint. Plus, consumers have recently shown concern regarding excessive packaging and how much waste their e-commerce shopping habits create which makes this reduction more important than ever.
6. Implement Integrated Packaging Solutions
One of the easiest way to achieve efficiency and save costs within your warehouse is through changes in the overall operational design. Optimize workflow and maximize the space available with integrated packaging solutions. This not only results in a higher speed, efficiency and productivity within the production line, but also decreases the overall carbon footprint on our environment.
Take the Next Steps to Maximize Labor Savings in Your Warehouse with Hughes
Maximize profits for years to come by implementing these labor savings ideas and formulating an integrated packaging solution. Need assistance? Take the next step in reducing warehouse costs by contacting a Hughes Sales Representative at 267-409-6100 today; we can help you with all your shipping and packaging operation needs.