3 Reasons to Increase Warehouse Maintenance!

Warehouse Maintenance

Modern warehouses today contain a mixture of equipment, software solutions and highly skilled professionals in order to fulfill the supply chain requirements, all requiring warehouse maintenance.

Over the past decade, warehouses have been a trusted source of practicing seamless logistics operations. However, warehouse management is a challenging task to stay alive in the competitive market.

As a part of warehouse management, regular inspections, preventive maintenance measures, replacing damaged goods, sorting and labeling inventory and transportation requirement assessments have to be done.

Moreover, having a proper warehouse management system can enable your company to lower their operational costs, improve the availability as well as lifecycle of machinery and enhance operational safety at the same time.

In order to improve the efficiency of warehouse management, it is advisable to introduce technology into the warehouse management process. By doing so, you can make the whole process more cost efficient and it can be the smartest way to improve your warehouse operations.

Challenges Affecting Warehouse Management

With the introduction of digital technologies in the supply chain, warehouse management strategies have also evolved over time. However, there are a lot of challenges that companies are facing even today. Therefore there is a constant need to improve or increase the existing warehouse management measures.

These challenges are capable of affecting both the operations as well as the maintenance of warehouse equipment. Some of the challenges affecting warehouse management operations are as follows:

1. Increasing Warehouse Automation

Warehouse automation was like the forest fire in the logistics industry, especially during and after the COVID 19 pandemic where there was a shortage of human resources. The warehouse operations include various monotonous tasks that can be difficult for human workers to repeatedly perform.

In order to overcome these problems, companies have developed numerous automation techniques to improve the efficiency and quality of work. These automation techniques are currently being used by companies all around the world.

However, to introduce automation in the warehouse, the implementation of artificial intelligence, automatic pickup machines, automated guided vehicles, and mobile robots is required. However, their designs are complex in nature and these can have an impact on the overall efficiency of these automated machines. 

To incorporate these proactive automation measures into practice, the warehouse maintenance needs to be increased. For the smooth functionality of these machines, the software systems that they are aligned with need to be updated as well.

Situations where any machine gets affected, or even a run to fail maintenance model, can have serious consequences as it can impact the efficiency of the complete warehouse operations. Companies need to leverage the condition monitoring techniques while developing maintenance solutions for warehouse equipment to ensure the timely detection of machinery defects. 

As warehouse operations evolve, companies rely on data streams to meet the competitive market demands. Moreover, the warehouses need to maintain a detailed maintenance report to manage inventories as well as equipment maintenance more efficiently.

Looking at the current scenario, warehouse automation is mandatory for companies to stay alive in the competitive market environment. Centralizing data management using cloud-based platforms, CMMS or Computerized Maintenance Management Systems, and capitalizing on Internet of Things (IoT) sensors are being used to collect real-time data on equipment performance.

Moreover, by collecting the relevant performance data enables the company to identify and resolve recurring operational failures, optimise corrective measures and strategically manage maintenance strategies thus, reducing the overall maintenance cost. 

2. Normalcy of Supply Chain Post Pandemic

During the pandemic phase of COVID-19, the operations of the supply chain industry were heavily disrupted. Companies suffered a heavy loss of customers due to the reduced demand levels in the market.

There were times when the movement of commodities was either not possible or restricted to specific areas. However, the demand for essential items was at the peak due to movement restrictions. This introduced a new regime for on-demand warehousing models.

These disruptions also played their part in affecting the management and maintenance of warehouse equipment. Resulting in a low equipment demand from the companies, while there were warehouses that were over utilising their existing equipment and workforces.

Companies soon realised that there is an urgent need for an emergency maintenance response to be able to reorganise the workforce to accommodate staffing shortages to run operations smoothly. 

Today, when the supply chains are returning towards normalcy or old practices, warehouse maintenance is currently experiencing a revolution. It is necessary for companies to adopt proactive maintenance measures especially after the post pandemic period.

Nowadays, customers like to place their order to companies that have a shorter delivery time period. While some of the companies are trying to cope up with the market trends, there are some companies in the market that are up to the expectation levels.

However, any scenario would require increasing the warehouse maintenance techniques. When the demand levels are high, companies must ensure that the operations are completed with the minimum time possible. Any defect in the equipment can cause supply chain delays causing damage to the overall reputation of the company and increasing operational costs.

It is mandatory for all companies to optimise preventive maintenance techniques and create lean maintenance inventory to facilitate timely corrective measures. 

3. Companies are Shifting to Sustainable Warehousing

Companies are understanding the impact of warehouses on the environment and are shifting towards Green Warehousing or sustainable warehouse operations. Companies are trying to reduce their carbon footprint by using low-emission equipment, eliminating non-value adding activities, using more sustainable materials and using renewable energy resources.

These measures can together help in reducing the environmental pollution as well as reducing operational costs at the same time. Warehouse maintenance plays an important role in reducing polluting substances from the environment.

Therefore, there is a constant requirement of increasing the warehouse maintenance techniques to discover and utilise machines that operate on less energy generating less pollution in the environment. It is important for companies to conduct regular inspections and prepare reports to identify the equipment emitting excessive pollutants and to frame them out from regular operations. 

It is also important to ensure that the equipment is operating for their designated time periods. Generating new warehouse machinery can be more harmful for the environment as it involves the usage of scarce natural resources.

It is advisable to extend the equipment life through the required maintenance measures as it can help them preserve and operate for longer periods thus, limiting environmental pollution. By transitioning to sustainable warehousing practices companies can stay competitive in the market.

Conclusion

These are the challenges affecting warehouse management which generates the need for you to increase your warehouse maintenance. Although, these warehouse practices are hard to set up but they surely can provide you with multiple advantages that can help you in gaining a competitive advantage over the competition.

AWL India, one of the leading logistics companies throughout the country can help you in increasing your warehouse maintenance measures and simultaneously help you in gaining advantage. Moreover, supply chain around the world are experiencing complex changes because of the evolving customer trends, macroeconomic and other issues.

But, AWL India can take care of them all with its unparalleled logistics and warehousing solutions that can result in the growth of your business.

Warehouse Maintenance article and permission to publish here provided by Rituraj Pankaj. Originally written for Supply Chain Game Changer and published on September 29, 2022.

One thought on “3 Reasons to Increase Warehouse Maintenance!”

  1. I just read this blog and I must say that it is incredibly informative and educational. Not only did I learn new things, but it also sparked my curiosity and encouraged me to do more research on the topic. The writing style is engaging and easy to understand, making it a pleasure to read. I would highly recommend this blog to anyone looking to gain more knowledge on a particular subject. Great job!

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