In one of my first design projects, I remember asking a warehouse supervisor if he had a stock locator system. Without missing a beat, the supervisor replied, “Sure, his name’s Joe. If Joe ain’t here, we go ask Bill.”

It sounds ridiculous, but this type of exchange is taking place in distribution centers (DCs) all over the country. I’ve observed my share of pickers back tracking through pick paths, drivers putting away pallets that don’t fit into racks, and piles of empty corrugated in the middle of busy pick aisles—all evidence of inefficiencies left unchecked.

But with today’s slowing economy, many managers are cleaning house. They’re seeking improvements to their bottom line. Unfortunately, many find they have little or no budget for fixing what’s broken.

Back in June 2006, we came up with 21 practical ideas for squeezing efficiencies out of your DC without draining your wallet (logisticsmgmt.com/DCtricks). What follows is an updated collection of additional “tricks of the trade” that I’ve compiled with my colleagues from TranSystems|Gross & Associates, a logistics consulting company.

This year’s Cheap Tricks team is made up of Don Derewecki, vice president of Transystems|Gross & Associates and Fernando Gonzalez, a senior engineer for the company.

So, if you’re looking to improve warehouse and DC productivity without busting your budget, you’ve come to the right place—we even organized it according to the major operations in the warehouse to make the list more helpful.

1. Get your suppliers to provide more palletized or unitized receipts. Do the math. It takes three people four hours to unload a floorloaded or unpalletized container. It takes one person just thirty minutes to unload the same amount in palletized receipts.

“Many grocery retailers specify the block and tier pallet pattern for every SKU on purchase orders,” notes Derewecki. “This ensures that inbound pallets match the grocer’s rack openings to eliminate unnecessary re-handling.” If a supplier does not comply with this block and tier requirement, it’s justification for refusing a load—as it’s considered to be part of the terms of purchase.

2. Figure out the optimum pallet pattern and communicate it. Sometimes building your own inbound pallets from an unpalletized container is unavoidable. If so, you may want to consider purchasing a pallet pattern calculator. You simply enter the dimensions of the carton and the pallet pattern calculator maximizes the number of cartons that can be loaded onto that pallet; however, you need to make sure you communicate this pattern to the palletizers. Gonzalez recalls how supervisors in one DC didn’t tell workers what the block and tier should be: “Palletizers were building pallets of all different heights.”

3. Where inventory profiles allow, build taller pallets. Remember: The taller the pallet, the more units per move, the fewer the moves, the more productive the operation. Check rack openings as you may need to adjust them; but be aware of your lift truck limits and stackability restrictions.

4. Work with vendors to maintain SKU integrity within their shipments. “If you’re supposed to receive 12 cartons of an SKU, you don’t want to get four cartons in the front of the container, four cartons in the middle, and the balance in the rear,” explains Derewecki. According to Gonzalez, some larger companies have a vendor compliance department that publishes a manual on what suppliers have to adhere to—including load planning. “If a vendor does not comply, they impose chargebacks to that vendor,” he adds.

5. Work with carriers to drop trailers so they can be unloaded or loaded during off-peak times. Dropping trailers allows warehouse workers to unload without having the pressure of turning that driver around and possibly getting charged for unforeseen delays.

6. Process orders in advance of weekly or seasonal peaks and stage them in racks and trailers at the shipping docks. Also called “pack-and-hold orders” or “pre-selections,” these are standard orders that are picked during off-peak periods and held at the shipping dock until their designated ship dates. Use trailers and pallets racks to hold these completed orders at the shipping dock.

7. Coordinate with vendors to create prepacks and other store-ready merchandise. Many apparel companies order overseas merchandise in bar-coded prepacks, which may contain one style and one color but with an assortment of sizes. As soon as it enters the DC, it’s scanned, re-labelled (based on a pre-determined store allocation) and cross-docked to the appropriate store.

8. Review travel paths to determine if there are opportunities to reduce travel. Fast-moving, promotional items should stay close to the dock. Figure 1 illustrates the product flow through at a facility where the fastest-moving items have the shortest travel paths. Move out-of-season merchandise to the back of the building.

9. Add additional beams and/or shelf decking to create smaller openings for SKUs with smaller cubes. “As companies are getting the tools to improve inventory turns, items that were bought in full pallet quantities are now being bought in case quantities and turned faster,” explains Derewecki. Smaller storage modules, such as decked pallet racks and shelving, may become more appropriate.

10. Store corrugated supplies prudently. Corrugate takes up a lot of cube and should not be occupying valuable warehouse space. Better yet, have your corrugate delivered as close to just-in-time as possible. “There are a number of people who make it,” says Derewecki, “so you can pretty much name your terms.”

11. Periodically perform general housekeeping throughout the facility. Many warehouses we visit are an absolute mess. They have obsolete product, office furniture, and files taking up valuable inventory space. Take note of these items and make arrangements for their removal or begin charging internally for storage space.

12. Reslot. What was selling last week may just be lengthening the pick path this week. Establish movement criteria. Anything falling below those criteria is what needs to move from valuable fast-moving pick positions.

13. Slot according to how you should build your pallets. Larger, heavier cartons should be slotted so they get picked first, while smaller, more fragile cartons should get picked at the end of the pick path. Watch your pickers. If they’re always re-handling product as they’re picking, then you need to reslot. Consider product restrictions. In meat DCs, for example, you need to have poultry as your base. “If poultry leaks, you can not have it leak on top of meat because of salmonella concerns,” explains Gonzalez.

14. Slot by movement and order patterns. Derewecki suggests slotting faster movers close to start and end points of pickers’ travel paths, so that pickers who only have fast movers on their pick lists can complete their orders in the minimum travel path. Slot items frequently ordered together so that they can also be easily picked together.

15. Shorten the pick path—batch pick. Gonzalez recalls an operation that always used a horseshoe-patterned pick path: “We suggested a z-pick, took a couple of sample orders and saw that we cut out an average of 300 to 350 feet of travel.” For high-volume, fast-moving items such as promotions and new products, create a pull sheet to set up a temporary “hot pick” zone. Pickers then batch pick multiple orders with these items in a much smaller area. Concerns with picker congestion may require the set-up of a duplicate pick line.

16. Streamline picking and packing. Pick directly to a shipping carton. This eliminates double-handling of orders and the handling of empty totes. Picking controls can be set up to minimize the amount of manual checking required. Scan-confirm each pick. Completed orders can also be checked with weigh-in-motion or cube verification devices. One facility shipped all items in an order in one layer with the UPC barcode facing up. A top-mounted camera/scanning device would take a picture to check if the order was complete and error-free.

17. Pick a fast moving item directly from its inbound trailer. Why put a product away when you need to ship it out immediately? Derewecki recalls how it was done in one facility: “As a picker came by the shipping dock to deliver his completed order, he would pick that SKU from its inbound trailer to start his next order.”

18. Plan replenishment. Locate replenishment stock close to pick modules (See Figure 2). Pull batch quantities for slower-movers. Many systems allow you to set up a “pick route” for replenishers that allow them to batch pick replenishment stock for a zone of pick modules.

19. Train indirect labor workforce to pick during peak demand in the warehouse. Gonzalez suggests training clerks, office staff, and even lumpers on critical jobs such as order picking before a peak demand period. These workers are in-house and would be able to step in immediately during unforeseen spikes in demand. When the going gets rough, literally all hands are on deck.

20. Establish and enforce labor standards. In a grocery environment, you may have up to 100 to 120 pickers during one shift. “I can’t possibly have enough supervisors on the floor,” says Gonzalez, “so having standards holds them accountable for their own performance.” Coupled with incentive programs, labor standards have been known to dramatically increase worker productivity.

21. Establish defined break/lunch schedules. Install audible and recognizable signals to indicate the start and end of breaks. “Everyone knows when they’re supposed to take their breaks,” notes Gonzalez, “but without any audible signals, many workers trickle back 5 to 10 minutes late, losing productivity.”

22. Coordinate with sales and marketing to smooth activity and inventory peaks. “Many times we see facilities struggling during what seem to be artificial peaks,” observes Derewecki. These are peaks, not driven by a particular customer demand, but by sales surges driven by the salesmen’s incentives. Derewecki suggests checking with management to see if they could stagger those incentives so that they weren’t all hitting when the warehouse is busiest. Marketing should also coordinate with the DC well in advance of future promotions to better plan the flow through the facility.

Although some of these ideas may sound simplistic, you’d be amazed at how many DCs still don’t implement them. With a little coordination, some thinking outside of the box, and a whole lot of common sense, there will always be room for improvement.