When running a warehouse, you’re probably aware there’s a thin line between effectiveness and mess. It doesn’t matter what your industry has to do with, items can quickly pile up resulting in plenty of clutter in sight. This would affect both productiveness, which is bound to equally affect your work environment’s safety (just waiting for accidents to happen), and success (loss of money, and time).
One way to take charge of the space is by organising it well, with the help of adequate shelving systems, plenty of storage for every item, as well as relying on a marking and labelling system, so you keep track and know exactly where every item is. Then, the other way is by acquiring the necessary bits and pieces of cleaning industrial products, from mops, buckets, and dustbins, to vacuums, pressure washers, and degreasers, and making cleaning part of your schedule, be that daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on the amount of mess you have to avoid.
Everyone can take part of the cleaning responsibility as you all share the warehouse together, so make sure you assign the specific zone every employee has to take care of. Come up with a well detailed plan, pointing out the exact time when specific areas should be cleaned. The frequency of floor cleaning isn’t same as that of machinery cleaning, as getting rid of floor spills is an immediate priority.
It’s your job to get the necessary cleaning industrial products, and instruct every employee how to use them, given that the compressed air the pressure washer is operated by can easily cause some safety risks if not handled properly.
Along with neatly organising every item present in the warehouse, and disposing of everything that’s unnecessary, it’s advisable to get in the habit of reusing, and recycling too. For instance, those pallets you’ve used only once with the newly brought warehouse items can be reused on other occasions, and the paper, wood, glass, and metal scrapes you see as debris can easily serve as recycling material.
The trick to make cleaning less of a chore is by strategic placement of the cleaning products. The garbage cans should be near employees that deal with frequent disposal of paper, or other types of trash. Fetching brooms, buckets, and vacuums shouldn’t take up a lot of time either. Since the magic of motivation always proves to be effective, you can track the cleaning progress, and give employees rewards when they’ve ensured the work area is spotless.