Winter is always a challenge for everyone involved in the logistics industry. It is a harsh and frustrating time of the year when you need to put in your best effort just to keep things operating smoothly. To help you tackle the challenge, we've prepared essential warehouse management tips for winter!
Ensure everyone stays warm
Your first concern should always be the safety of your employees. This is why the first of our essential warehouse management tips for winter is ensuring they all follow a proper 'dress code' for the season. And by that, we mean that they wear layered clothing, a winter cap, and even a scarf. Even with the best HVAC system in the world, your warehouse will still get surprisingly cold due to the influx and outflow of goods. Especially if your warehouse is bustling with work. And if you want to reduce human error in your warehouse, you can't let your workers' fingers feel entirely numb from cold! So, it is wise to equip your workers with warm and no-slip gloves!
Make sure your warehouse is adequately insulated
Of course, ensuring an entire warehouse is perfectly insulated is difficult. The size of the space will likely make it impossible to keep it perfectly warm, anyway. However, what you can do is double-check that all the door and window seals are functional. This will go a long way towards making your heating system vastly more power efficient and keeping the space at a comfortable temperature.
Work on slip prevention
As the experts from Preferred Movers like to point out, moving heavy things puts you at immense risk of slip and fall accidents. Winter is a particularly horrible season when it comes to this issue. Wet weather is typical, and the ice that follows is an even greater hazard. There are several things you can do to prepare for this:
- Stock up on salt in advance will let you combat ice fairly effectively. Get a slightly better price for buying off-season!
- Add slip-prevention mats and doors and entryways.
- Apply protective coatings that can shield the surfaces inside and outside your warehouse from ice and water damage and work to prevent slipping, too.
Double-check your temperature-controlled units
The next of our essential warehouse management tips for winter is not to assume things will just work correctly! If your warehouse has temperature-controlled storage units for sensitive goods, you need to be absolutely sure they are working well. If something goes wrong and they fail to make up for the sudden temperature drop, you will lose many valuable goods. So, it is always smart to have professionals brought in to examine the systems and just okay everything after making sure nothing is broken or malfunctioning. That way, you would also not have to worry about potentially having to reimburse someone for damaged or completely ruined goods.
Anticipate the need for snow removal
Snow removal will most likely be an issue if you live in a state with heavy snowfall. Especially since most wait for the snow to happen before making you can make any concrete plans on how to deal with it. The salt we already mentioned will help, but only once the snow is cleared out. Have a system and worker rotation in place well before you actually need it! This will help prevent accidents in your warehouse related to snowfall by a large margin. And it will also help prevent the weather from impacting the efficiency of your warehouse!
Do a general maintenance check
The final of our essential warehouse management tips for winter is the logical extension of everything we've discussed so far. Namely, ensuring that the building is in good enough condition to make it through the season. A professional warehousing provider will provide that as few things can go wrong as possible. In other words, you can't afford a leaking roof, broken tiles, damaged windows, etc. Every last one of these flaws must be found and fixed well before the year's harshest season!
Final comment
Following our essential warehouse management tips for winter will let you get through the season relatively painlessly! Of course, you should always try to perfect your preparations even beyond the advice we've offered here. That is the only way to better your business and eventually expand it.
For over 30 years, 18 Wheels Logistics has strived to be the most customer-centric trucking, warehousing, and logistics company around. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 18 Wheels relies on experience and integrity to make customers happy and remain on the cutting edge of shipping and logistics management.
If you have any questions about this article or you would like to talk to us about your shipping needs, please call us at (604) 439-8938.
