Driving Sustainability by Minimizing Distances Traveled in the Warehouse

Analyst Insight: Businesses seek efficiencies in their warehouse environment to reduce waste and help protect the environment. Warehouse waste can come in the form of excess packaging, energy usage, equipment utilization, and storage and transport operations. Warehouses can easily drive sustainability by better planning all activities to minimize total distance traveled inside a building. 

Reducing Forklift Travel Inside a Building

By implementing sustainable practices in scheduling all work, warehouse operations can reduce their environmental impact and save money. One aspect of this is optimizing forklift travel distances within the warehouse. The average liquid propane forklift consumes about 1.5 gallons of fuel per hour, generating around 19 pounds of CO₂ during that period. At a speed of 10 miles per hour, a forklift adds 1.9 pounds of CO₂ to the environment for every mile traveled. Reducing the distance traveled inside the warehouse can significantly lower these emissions. 

To minimize forklift travel distances, warehouses can implement the following strategies:

1. Efficient warehouse layout: Designing a warehouse layout that minimizes travel distances between storage areas, loading docks and other key locations can significantly reduce forklift travel distances. This may involve placing high-demand items closer to loading docks or using data-driven techniques to optimize the arrangement of storage areas.
    
2. Improved door assignment: Assigning the best door for all inbound and outbound shipments can reduce the need for forklifts to travel long distances within the warehouse by minimizing the total travel distance per pick or putaway. This reduces the time spent on each item, which in turn reduces transportation-related emissions.
    
3. Adopting directed work in the warehouse management system (WMS): Directed work within the WMS can help optimize forklift routes by creating a pool of work considering real-time data on inventory locations, warehouse layout and other factors, and then assigning that work to the closest person. This reduces “deadhead” travel distances, or unproductive travel. Even saving two seconds of deadhead travel per pick can save hundreds or thousands of miles over the course of a few weeks.
    
4. Using automated guided vehicles (AGVs): AGVs can help reduce forklift travel distances by automating the movement of goods within the warehouse. These vehicles follow predetermined routes, minimizing the distance traveled and improving overall warehouse efficiency. 

Other Easy Wins

Another warehouse waste that can harm the environment is poor warehouse positioning. Not having the warehouse at the right location means excess movement of trucks between the warehouse, production, distribution center, or manufacturing location. Correctly positioning a warehouse in the supply chain network can help the environment in several ways. 

• Reducing transportation distances: By positioning a warehouse closer to suppliers, manufacturers, or end customers, the transportation distances for goods can be reduced. This can lead to a decrease in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
   
• Optimizing transportation routes: A strategically placed warehouse can help optimize transportation routes, reducing the number of trucks on the road and minimizing the carbon footprint associated with transportation.
   
• Reducing waste: Proper positioning of a warehouse can also help to reduce waste. For example, if a warehouse is located closer to suppliers, it may be possible to order smaller quantities of inventory more frequently, which can help reduce the amount of unsold or expired inventory.
   
• Improving energy efficiency: By selecting a location that is designed for energy efficiency and incorporates sustainable materials, it is possible to reduce the environmental impact of the warehouse itself; for example, choosing a warehouse powered by solar panels or wind energy.

 Connecting Production to Distribution Helps the Environment 

It's pretty standard that the movement of products directly from production to various deployment destinations is challenging, due to the complex interplay of production, warehousing and transportation. Often, there is a mismatch between pre-built stock transfer orders (STOs) and what gets produced. Without the buffer of the warehouse storage, line-to-truck struggles to have a ready supply of trailers that match production. Trailers may have to wait idling in the warehouse yard until inventory is available to load the truck. Truck idling means carbon emissions and air pollution. 

Technology exists that moves production runs directly to the truck, eliminating touches, reducing the need for storage space at the manufacturing site, and reducing truck idling while waiting for a product to be available for loading. This technology creates transportation requirements days in advance so that best-cost carriers can be engaged. As production changes, transportation can be rescheduled to match production schedules. Each hour, the need and timing of trailers and inventory are updated so everything is synchronized. The right amount of inventory is at the loading dock at the right time with the right amount of labor so that products are loaded quickly, and idling is reduced. 

Reducing the distance between products and transportation speeds fulfillment, which in turn helps with sustainability efforts by having the correct number of trucks arrive at the location at the right time. Manufacturers can free up upwards of 10% of space capacity by moving products from production directly to the truck. Less warehouse space needed equals less energy used.