Warehouse Racking Floor Plan Drawing Tool
Warehouse Layout + Route Optimization Software: The Essential Tools for On-Fourth dimension Deliveries
August 24, 2021
When companies want to improve their on-time delivery rate, they often focus on their delivery squad. But that'due south but function of the equation.
Delivery starts in your warehouse and ends on the route. So if you desire to increment your on-time delivery charge per unit, you need to optimize routing from the moment a client order comes in.
Inside your warehouse, you control the environment. Pattern a keen layout and your warehouse operations will naturally run more smoothly. Once yous step outside, you can utilize advanced software such every bit OptimoRoute to increase your turnaround times.
Put these together? Yous've got a fully optimized route from your warehouse to your customer's front end door—and the perfect equation for on-time deliveries.
Topics covered in this commodity:
- Warehouse Layout Must-Haves
- What to Consider When Designing Your Warehouse Layout
- Warehouse Layout Design Software
- Use OptimoRoute to Conquer Final-Mile Delivery
(If y'all want to review some mutual warehouse terminology before you start, we as well have a guide for that!)
Warehouse Layout Must-Haves
Before you lot offset thinking of how your warehouse is laid out, let's review the basics. No affair what type of products y'all manage, for an efficient warehouse and streamlined inventory direction & club fulfillment your facility layout needs to include these essential elements:
Inbound Receiving Bay: Begin with a receiving bay. Brand sure you lot allow enough space for products to be unloaded and scanned before beingness put away.
Storage Areas: Shelving units and pallet racking needs to be wide enough (and stiff enough) to safely secure your inventory. Make sure your storage capacity can accommodate your inventory: if you need to store long objects, such as lumber or structure supplies, cantilever racks are a dandy pick. If you offering food warehousing, make certain you consider how much of your storage space will need to exist controlled at various temperatures, and block off areas for frozen foods, refrigerated foods, and dry appurtenances.
Packing Space: Ensure there's a large enough picking area for material treatment; exit ample space for pickers to transfer product to packers, and for packers to set up orders for aircraft. Designate infinite for shipping materials to be stored as well.
Outbound Loading Docks: Your packing department should exist located shut to loading docks but not and then shut that they crowd the loading bay. Block off space for pallets and cargo to be staged before delivery trucks are loaded.
Office: Every warehouse needs a primal command expanse or office where managers, dispatchers, and projection-direction teams can safely work away from the warehouse floor.
Break Room: You'll also need an area for employees to sit during their break, lockers where employees tin store personal holding during their shifts, and a small kitchen or at least a refrigerator for employees to keep their lunch.
It's a good idea to consider your parking lot and driveway structure every bit well. Your internal floor program affects the flow of traffic outside of your building, and then have fourth dimension to recall nearly how trucks will motility in and out of your loading docks and how yous want employees to admission the building. You may demand additional piece of work areas if y'all accept a quality-control partitioning or a returns department.
What to Consider When Designing Your Warehouse Layout
At that place are several things you need to consider when creating your warehouse layout. Each of these elements volition touch your procedure efficiency and on-time delivery.
Safety
Make sure everything is up to code. You don't want to take to go back and redesign something or cease operations because your new warehouse layout doesn't abide by OSHA guidelines. You'll need to gene in enough space for equipment, such as forklifts, to safely navigate through aisles. Leave plenty of room for employees to safely walk down aisles and pass each other between storage bins. As well leave plenty headroom for forklifts and mechanism to articulate lighting fixtures.
Proper ventilation is essential. Yous need to ensure that exhaust and carbon monoxide from forklifts, delivery vehicles, and other equipment won't build upwards inside your facility. Designate space for spill cleanup and eye-washing stations if yous are going to store chemicals.
Traffic period
Your warehouse layout should remove inefficiencies streamline the movement of products through each department and make all of your distribution eye processes easier, from receiving shipments to auditing your warehouse. For case, your packing section should be located near your loading docks, not near receiving. Optimizing your warehouse layout like this ties in heavily with our distribution center best practices and procedures.
You should also consider the order-picking procedure yous plan to utilise. Let'due south say you operate a nutrient warehouse, and you have three unlike zones: dry goods, refrigerated foods, and frozen foods. It would be smart to program the zones in that order, with dry appurtenances farthest from your loading dock because those items can withstand greater temperature fluctuations.
Frozen foods and refrigerated foods should be located closer to your loading dock (in zones 2 and 3 in the layout above).
Within each zone, you tin can then place the almost popular items at the easiest to admission ends or points. If nosotros look at the diagram above, popular items in zone 3 should be placed nigh the top left corner, and items purchased infrequently should be stored near the bottom right corner. Items that are oftentimes purchased together should be stored close together, likewise, to reduce the number of steps a picker must accept to assemble mutual orders.
Your commitment or shipping methods
If you take enough foursquare footage, create separate packing zones for items that will be delivered versus items that will be shipped using third-party couriers. Products need to be packaged, weighed, and labeled differently, depending on which delivery or shipping method you're using. And so the more yous tin can separate these ii systems, the better.
Information technology may also aid to designate different loading docks for different couriers. That way, your team will know to e'er stage outgoing shipments for couriers in ane area, and products for your in-house commitment team in another. The more y'all can exercise to conspicuously differentiate dissimilar processes within your warehouse, the less likely your team will make mistakes and the more efficient your whole operation will run.
Warehouse Layout Design Software
Employ software to brand the design procedure easier. Hither are 3 different tools you tin can use to test out layout options and visualize your floor plan before building.
Typhoon it Free
As the name suggests, Draft information technology Costless is free CAD (computer-aided blueprint) software you tin can utilize to mock up your warehouse layout. If all you need is a unproblematic 2nd architectural design, Draft it Free is a bully pick. And if you decide you lot need more than advanced features, y'all can always upgrade to their Plus, Pro, or Architectural program.
SmartDraw
Yous can use SmartDraw's warehouse templates as a starting point. Customize your warehouse design by dragging and dropping elements within the filigree. You tin can test out the software at no cost, but you lot won't be able to relieve your work until you create an account. A single membership costs $nine.95/calendar month (billed yearly).
WarehouseBlueprint
If y'all want 3D mock-ups to help you visualize your pattern, WarehouseBlueprint has the features you need. With their heatmap extension, y'all can even map out your supply chain downwardly to private SKUS and, based on purchase frequency, place inventory within your pattern. WarehouseBlueprint starts at approximately $57 (39 euros).
If it's possible, walk through your layout in the space earlier you build your design. Tape or marker out where everything volition go in your empty warehouse space, and take a few employees walk through workflows. This is a nifty way to spot problems before you're besides far along to exist able to adjust.
Use OptimoRoute to Conquer Terminal-Mile Delivery
In the warehouse, the best way to get more than efficient is by physically changing your warehouse layout, only exterior the warehouse, y'all don't have that luxury. Y'all can't change the roads or control traffic. The best you can do is optimize your ain path. How practice you do that? OptimoRoute.
Transmission planning negatively affects on-time deliveries. It non only slows downwardly the actual execution of last-mile deliveries but too requires more planning time. Hardie's Fast Foods once routed deliveries manually. When they started using OptimoRoute, their overall fleet mileage dropped 20%, and their delivery-planning process became eight times faster. Their on-time delivery rate also improved from 89% to 94% (1.five% MoM).
Here are only a few of OptimoRoute'due south advanced features and automations that yous can use to increase your on-time delivery rate.
Automated Route Optimization: Click "Plan routes" and you'll become the virtually efficient routes for thousands of deliveries and hundreds of drivers in a matter of seconds.
Commuter and Vehicle Constraints: Set specific parameters for orders that demand to be transported on refrigerated trucks, handled by a item team, and more. Assign personnel and/or vehicle constraints for temperature-sensitive items, heavy loads, hazardous materials, livestock, or anything else you need to deliver.
Return to Depot: Program multiple truckloads for private drivers within a single shift.
Alive Tracking: See where delivery drivers are along their road so you tin can precisely time picking and packing to minimize the time products are sitting on a loading dock waiting to be put on a truck. You'll also exist able to accurately assign loading time slots and increase capacity by reducing delays.
Combined Pickups and Driblet-Offs: Hands schedule product-return pickups—reverse logistics—simultaneously with deliveries. Simply enter each vehicle's unique cargo capacity and OptimoRoute will assign pickups at the optimal point when there is enough free space on a truck.
Existent-Fourth dimension Delivery Tracking: Evangelize a superior customer experience with customizable notifications, including a link for customers to view their deliveries en route in real time. If you run in-house delivery, this feature reduces incoming customer service calls by equally much as 70%.
You tin try OptimoRoute at no chance and see how these features affect your on-time delivery rate. Activate your xxx-day free trial today—no credit carte required.
Streamline Your Tech Stack with API Integration
Much similar a groovy warehouse layout creates a better menstruation of traffic beyond your warehouse floor, integrating your tech stack reduces bottlenecks in your digital workflow. Make certain your software and apps are all connected. Integrate OptimoRoute with your WMS (warehouse direction system) or other tech using our Spider web Service API Integration.
Source: https://optimoroute.com/warehouse-layouts/
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