how to reduce labour costs in factories and warehouses

A thorough analysis of your current processes is your crucial starting point. Doing so will enable you to identify areas that need improvement and/or which are pushing up your labour costs. Crunching the data will help you understand how many employees it takes to perform certain tasks and how long it takes to perform them. You’ll be able to see where the bottlenecks and inefficiencies are, and, based on the information you’ve gathered, streamline operations accordingly.

One area to consider improving in your warehouse or factory is your loading processes. Manual loading takes time and more team members than you might wish, whereas using an automated loading solution, like the ones we sell at Joloda Hydraroll, speeds loading and unloading trailers or containers massively. The systems also free up more of your workers to focus on other tasks and be more productive, improving employee morale.

Employee turnover occurs when staff leave their jobs either voluntarily, for reasons such as to work for another company or start their own business, or involuntarily, for instance through a dismissal or redundancy. Replacing an employee is more expensive than retaining one and costs the business time in lost productivity. Making the working environment safe, providing suitable training, allowing plenty of opportunities for growth and offering incentives are all ways to keep your top talent, keep employee turnover rate down, and provide a career path.

What about the staff that are left behind? Labour shortages place strain on the remaining workers, who must fulfil the demands of their role but also pick up the workload of those who have moved on from the company. Automated loading solutions such as ours, are one way to ease the pressure, and the more physically demanding aspects of loading trailers or unloading them on workers. Logistics employees can work more safely, be more productive and, importantly, by lightening the load, stay motivated, rather than demoralised and feeling the time is right to look for a new employer.

When it comes to warehouse fulfilment, labour costs constitute a large share of the cost. Save on these and you’ll make a substantial saving. Tracking significant key performance indicators (KPIs) is one way to set about it. These indicators include total errors, which enables you to identify where errors are occurring; fulfilment time, which allows you to gain an idea of how long it’s taking to fulfil orders and be able to optimise labour; and inventory accuracy, which will help you to minimise errors and eliminate unnecessary labour.

Lean production is all about eliminating waste from production processes while still maintaining quality. You can produce high quality products at lower costs. If you fully embrace lean production in your facility and implement it correctly, you can boost productivity, shorten throughput times and reduce inventory. A more efficient process enables employees to produce more units, which lowers your labour costs per unit. 

Part of streamlining your processes could see you cut down on unnecessary transportation of goods around the plant. Solutions such as our moving floor conveyor can link up directly with your production line, helping you move materials from one part of the plant to another swiftly and more safely. Operators in the automotive industry, where plants must transport heavy original parts from the loading docks to different parts of the plant, have found them especially helpful. 

Standardising parts and processes can increase productivity, reduce labour costs and process variability, and make operations more efficient. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) provide employees with a clear, consistent way of performing tasks. The standardisation removes the guesswork from tasks and saves employees time trying to work out what it is they should. 

Logistics is a dynamic industry. Managers face the constant challenge of balancing the labour supply to meet demand without diminishing profitability. Hiring part-time workers is one way around it. Companies can have a core workforce of full-time workers, but also employ additional workers, either temporary or permanent, who they can scale back on or allocate fewer hours in quieter times. Flexible working schedules and staffing allows businesses to maintain quality and, at the same time, keep their abour costs down. 

Absenteeism, the habitual absence of an employee or employees from work for a time considered longer than acceptable, is a blight on business productivity and profits. Occasional illness, family emergencies and scheduled holidays are reasonable grounds to be missing from work, whereas absenteeism can consist of long-term habitual absence from the workplace or of habitual sudden or unexpected workplace absence. 

Absenteeism occurs for a variety of reasons. Below are reasons employees may engage in prolonged absence from work: 

• burnout; 
• childcare; 
• harassment; 
• disengagement; 
• mental illness; 
• injury or illness. 

Our loading systems, automated and manual, lighten the load considerably for employees, allowing them to perform their duties much more safely and at little, if any at all, risk of injury. As a result, they’re less likely to be missing from work because of injury. Since workers can complete loading and unloading more quickly, the systems also help to keep morale up and, because staff can remain on course to hit productivity goals, and perform highly to reduce stress. 

Conflict in the workplace hampers productivity and can send labour costs soaring. Workers may resign from their roles, leaving you with the expense of replacing them. They may take time off from work because of the conflict. If not directly because of the conflict, then because of the stress, anxiety or depression the conflict has created. 

Conflict in a workplace can arise for all sorts of reasons, such as personality clashes, competition for resources, conflict over tasks or differing workstyles. One thing you can do to minimise conflict in the factory or warehouse is ease the pressure on workers by installing a loading system. Removing the physical exertion from a task, especially a demanding one such as loading and unloading trailers, can keep worker morale up and job satisfaction levels high. Happier workers can maintain a more positive, more collaborative attitude at work and avoid seeking conflict with others or engaging in it.