Most Recent Articles

Since 2020 has us rethinking EVERYTHING we were doing before, we wanted to make a quick share for you to start the week with a visual look at some basic Warehouse Design fundamentals. The events of the last few months have everyone wondering what the warehouse of the future will look like. But while doing updates to your CURRENT space to react to the new normal, how closely have you been adhering to the basics already?

We thought this infographic was a good representation of some of those basic pillars of good warehouse design. Let's start with the basics we use for planning. The one thing we'll highlight here is how often we hear that space management is the BIGGEST issue our client's are having. If you are exceeding the guidance below and using over 30% of your square footage for storage, it means you might be feeling crowded. Better rack utilization and building up may improve your sense of space!

Have you spent any time observing the activity on your dock recently? How do you feel about the way it works and the share of cost it takes in your operations? Are you tracking the cost? Well, given that nearly every operations facility is a “cost center” on your company’s P&L, you should be looking at your cost structure for each of our main “Process Areas” like Receiving, Picking, Packing, Shipping, etc. While there are a lot of factors that go into generating the cost model for each of your processes, two areas in particular - Receiving and Shipping - are particularly dependent on the design of your dock and the equipment deployed to support it.

Unless your facility is consistently recognized as a bleeding edge innovator and always staying two steps ahead of the rest of your industry, you’re probably like the rest of us and are hungry to know more about how your facility performs or compares to your competitors or others in your industry.

Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash

“Industry 4.0” is a term now in common use generally to describe the “fourth industrial revolution”, a term that it is used interchangeably with. But what does it mean, on a high level and specifically for what impact it might have on your business?

To get us all on the same page, let’s first go back to “Industry 1.0” and be clear about the other distinct eras of industrial revolution:

In October, Newcastle Systems’ own Kevin Ledversis was on a team of presenters in a webinar that dug into the challenges managers are facing with labor issues – sourcing, hiring, training and retaining in addition to things like performance and pay.  We’ve covered labor and staffing as a regular topic here over the years, and think the data that was assembled for this webinar is worth sharing widely.

It’s not in our culture here to talk about ourselves too much, nor our products. We especially don’t like talking about OTHER products because we like to think ours can speak for themselves. That’s why nearly everything we publish here in our blog and white papers are about the things we know that help our readers the most – things like process, automation, warehouse management, lean practices, and more. And we always enjoy the feedback we get year-to-year that tells us you want more content like that, especially in regards to process and measurement.

Theft from the supply chain is an old problem that even the newest facilities can’t entirely eliminate. A recent arrest in the Seattle area showed just how big a dent a small group of industrious thieves can make in even the biggest player in the industry.

The latest news from Newcastle Systems includes "No assembly required".  We have improved the delivery process by assembling the workstations in our manufacturing plant and packaging them for you to unpack in minutes. You can easily have the mobile workstation with portable power unpacked and rolling in minutes. We have assembly manuals, but soon they will become obsolete.

Warehouse design and management are an art form and  science unto their own. 3PLs and large retailers, in particular, have taken what was once a slow-moving, unseen part of a cost-center in the business and turned it into a highly efficient, increasingly automated, carefully measured and service-focused asset. Manufacturers, on the other hand, while being at the leading edge of automation, measurement and efficiency on the production floor, may not always apply the same level of industrial design planning and management as they would normally demand.

As it turns out, warehouse operations for a manufacturing facility have a lot of similarities as other types of businesses, but do have some requirements that are unique to their needs.

Managing power supplies can always be a challenge. There are a lot of variables involved, especially when you want your power to be cordless and mobile. There are competing needs – in some scenarios, there is a constant need for more power as the number of devices, their features and their wireless needs grow, but traditionally this results in more weight. At the same time, many devices use less power than ever, allowing for smaller and smaller power packs to meet the need, but can be more expensive using the new chemistries and form factors they require.