Austerity in the Warehouse
Posted on 17/03/20
Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves – as true today as its always been! And there’s some very simple steps that can be taken to reduce daily running costs of any business, across all departments.
Cindy, our Operations Manager, has been looking at internal costs and consumable waste within the Warehouse Department and has implemented a few more measures to the already ‘tight ship’. Together these small cost saving plans will save the company a lot of time, money and wastage, and, just as importantly, the measures will help to reduce the impact on our environment.
- Multi-drop deliveries save time, fuel, and vehicle wear and tear by incorporating deliveries to more than one customer in any trip out thus reducing mileage and time taken.
- Careful route-planning before a journey identifies the most direct routes for multi-drop deliveries and avoids back-tracking, again reducing mileage and time taken.
- Re-using packaging from our own deliveries to pack customer orders recycles cardboard and other packing materials. Recycling reduces the rubbish pile in our Warehouse as well as cutting the amount of new packaging materials we need to buy in.
- Re-using our ‘goods in’ packaging provides additional protection for our ‘goods out’ and reduces the need for vast quantities of cellophane wrap. The Warehouse Team have reduced their cellophane use by 60%.
- Less cellophane on customers’ packages means less to throw away at point of delivery when the packages are unwrapped.
- Less parcel tape is also being used. Why wrap tape 3 times around a parcel when twice will do?
- Lamberts has skips for recycling too, so anything that we can’t recycle is sent away to recycling centres. Recent metal recycling has actually earned the company a small amount of cash.
“It’s not difficult to make small changes that will potentially have a big impact on costs over the course of the year.
“Observe current systems. Analyse the actions. Discuss alternatives with the Team. Implement changes. It’s as easy as that!” says Cindy.
And whilst all this cost saving is going on within the Warehouse, the Team are merrily singing away. Is this their way of cutting electricity costs by not turning on the radio? Maybe some cuts go a little too far …….