What Are the Key Factors When Designing a Warehouse?
A warehouse is a place where products are stored, sorted, and shipped. It's an integral part of many businesses' supply chains. A warehouse can be designed for any industry, whether it is retail, manufacturing, or distribution.
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When designing a warehouse, you need to consider many factors; this blog post will cover the top 5 considerations you should make before beginning construction on your new facility!
Accessibility
Warehouses are often large and expansive buildings with heavy-duty machinery that can be dangerous if not handled properly. Accessibility is essential in warehouse design because it ensures employees can enter the building without any obstruction or danger of injury from moving equipment. In addition, accessibility also helps limit back injuries caused by lifting items into trucks.
Type of Products To Store
You need to consider the type of products you're storing. First, it's essential to stack them, which means their dimensions should ideally be small and square; round or oddly shaped items can't stack nicely on top of one another without being squished in some way. Some common types found in warehouses are clothing like jeans, t-shirts, dresses, shoes like sneakers or flats, or boxes of food items such as cereal or pasta sauce.
The best way to store these goods is on deep shelves so that you can push them to the back without knocking them into one another and spilling over. The exception will be if you have many square/rectangular-shaped items that you need to store on the shelves.
Space Available
Space is a significant consideration in designing a warehouse for your business. How much space is available for the warehouse? Is there ample room to store inventory, set up machines, or shelve and pack products? The more space you have on hand, the better.
If you are considering a warehouse with limited space to work with, think about adding shelving units that take up less ground-level space and can be stacked vertically or on top of one another. It will help maximize your use of floor area and provide needed storage for goods while also keeping costs low.
Flow of Goods
The flow of goods is the most critical factor when designing a warehouse. The order in which you place and organize things can make all the difference between an efficient, cost-effective operation or one that's wearing down staff with heavy lifting.
It would help if you designed the flow of goods to avoid congestion at any given point. It means no bottlenecks, aisles that are wide enough for pallets to be placed side-by-side, and all racks at heights where people can reach them easily.
Type of Storage Designs
Different designs for warehouses are suited to other purposes. It would help if you considered storage designs depending on their intended use. For example, the needs for a warehouse storing raw materials would differ from one holding finished goods, which might be different from an order fulfillment center where orders are processed and shipped to customers. In every scenario, it is probably best to work with experienced pros like http://www.biltindustries.com/custom-design-engineering/ when undertaking a new warehouse design project.
Conclusion
The main takeaway from this blog post is many factors to consider when designing a warehouse. You should also consider how you will use the product, the manufacturing process, location, and what type of machinery your company has as well? The most important thing to remember is that you need an ergonomic design for workers to be as safe and efficient as possible.
