The most difficult cost to control  

Ask any warehouse manager, “what is the most difficult cost to control?” and the answer will invariably be labor. 

Labor costs comprise the largest part of a warehouse’s operating expenses. Usually, the biggest bottleneck in a retail warehouse is the picking and packing process. 

It is necessary for warehouse employees to have effective communication skills to facilitate the carrying out of tasks and preventing costly mistakes.  

A warehouse manager need to provide the opportunities for employees to exchange tips for more efficient warehouse processes.

He need to train his current staff how to work smarter. The warehouse manager need to make an efficient warehouse labor plan and need to reduced staff turnover.  

Reducing turnover will save a considerable amount on labor costs — the cost to recruit, hire and train new  employees will eat up the budget.

Also, there’s no possibility to make more money during seasonal jumps of orders, because of needs to hire more people and taking time to train them as well. Moreover, it is a big challenge when all workflow processes is on papers and in multiple spreadsheets.  

What to do:

Look for ways intelligent automation can improve brand experience throughout the customer experience and create competitive value for your warehouse in the long term, rather than focusing on its ability to improve operational efficiencies and reduce costs.

Choose a cloud-base WMS platform carefully to ensure it has measurable, scalable automation components. You should be able to measure business impact, gain visibility of processes.

Think beyond basic automation. This capability isn’t just about removing human activities from warehouse processes, but rather shifting to a culture of speed, agility and innovation.