For your warehouse to comply with safety standards and run efficiently it is important to ensure you have it laid in a logical way using warehouse line marking. Line marking helps employees to work quickly and reduces the chances of accidents or damage to equipment. If line marking is used over painted areas, it can help alleviate risks by clearly highlighting areas for people, machines and vehicles.
Why should my warehouse be line marked?
As mentioned above, the safety aspect of warehouse line marking should be your top priority. Keeping your staff safe should be your main concern, ensuring you invest in the health and well being of your employees is the right choice to make within your business, ultimately they keep the cogs turning and without them, there would be no output.
Where should I put my line marking? The markings should be created in places that could potentially be unsafe like high-risk areas of the warehouse, the use of different colours and symbols are used to highlight areas that need to be approached with greater caution.
Line marking will help to keep your work environment clean and tidy – if you run a warehouse with consumables or beauty products a different level of hygiene needs to be maintained – having these designated areas marked out will ensure these hygiene levels are constantly met and ensure your warehouse is compliant when checks are carried out by external teams. Overall, your line marking will reflect different areas within your warehouse and will encourage a neat and tidy workplace.
Stock can take up copious amounts of space, creating a free-flowing warehouse with line marking will help ascertain the available space you have. By arranging stock within marked bays it allows you to decide if there is a need to create additional floor space i.e a mezzanine floor or the addition of shelving or pallet racking. This use of space will also create clear thinking for your employees, with everything laid out in order productivity will increase as staff work efficiently in a clear environment, rather than a cramped, over stacked warehouse where finding and placing stock can be difficult. This can often lead to stock being misplaced by being stacked in the wrong area or an area where there is just ‘some space’.
A well thought out storage strategy and line marking will help staff coordinate and effectively get products out on time without the need for hunting high and low for the relevant product, thus meaning, if you are running a smooth operation with clearly marked bays and labelled areas your product will leave the warehouse quicker and improve your overall turn around. With the increasing popularity and demand from online shopper wanting goods immediately, you will be creating a business gaining repeat orders, time and time again.
A great little tip…
Before you start your final line marking on your warehouse floor, do a few productivity and efficiency test runs to ensure your plan works well for everyone within your warehouse – consider different scenarios and note which ones work the best and scrap the ones that do not work. It is important that you consider feedback from your employees at this point, they are the ones on the warehouse floor on a daily basis, running from point A to point B. The configurations you finally decide on, by doing these test runs, will ultimately provide you with the best outcome for your operation.
Finally…
Do not forget you have the option of temporary line marking or permanent line markings for your warehouse. Tape makes the best temporary line markings and is a cheaper option, it allows you to remove the tape as needed, this is a good choice if your warehouse is constantly evolving.
Permanent line markings are painted on using a variety of methods and will last years before they need touching up.
