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Maintenance is the backbone of darn near any industry, and warehousing is no exception. Proper warehouse maintenance is the key to making sure your installations and product go undamaged, your workers can perform their jobs without delay or risk of injury, and things will just go more smoothly overall.

 

While every warehouse is going to require different steps to keep it properly maintained and operating at peak performance, there’s some things that maintenance managers of any stripe can do to keep their warehouses in order to prevent breakdowns in either equipment or process. Here’s five of the most common (and most useful) tips to keep your warehouse at its best:

 

Always Stay Proactive

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, as the old saying goes, and that applies to more than just doctor’s visits. The most effective warehouse maintenance workers are the ones that identify potential problems and stay on top of them to prevent them becoming real problems down the road.

 

The easiest way to do this is to set a maintenance schedule and then make sure you stick with it. Those schedules are made for a reason, and adhering to them will help prevent a lot of damage to your warehouse storage, your doors, and even the warehouse itself and allow you to avoid bigger, harder-to-fix problems down the road.

 

Open Communication

Particularly if you have a dedicated maintenance team, maintaining an open line of communication is crucial. Schedule regular meetings, and make sure they’re productive – keep workers posted on upcoming maintenance schedules, work to make sure that they understand the needs of the specific warehouse, and always encourage them to speak up if something isn’t working right. You’d be surprised how helpful a random comment from a team member can be, sometimes.

 

Understand Your Equipment

Of course, all the schedules and meetings in the world aren’t going to help if you have no idea what you’re fixing, or how to fix it. Take your team on a careful review of everything you’ll have to fix and maintain and really get to know it. Do you have heavy machinery for part creation that needs to be checked up? Are there heavy industrial doors in some areas? Do you know how all your wire shelving and pallet racks are put together? These are the sort of questions you should ask yourself before you actually need to fix them, and your processes will all be better off for it.

 

Be Part Of The Product Selection Process

Not everything can be fixed forever, and eventually new items are going to have to be brought in to either replace the current equipment or to just expand what’s currently on-hand. If your warehouse is planning a new, bigger product order, make sure to be involved in the selection and ordering process so you can keep tabs on what’s incoming and offer feedback on the amount of effort it might require to manage the new equipment.

 

Stay Vigilant

Let’s face it: no matter how meticulous you are as a maintenance planner, there’s always going to be accidents and breakdowns. What you need to do in those cases is just keep an eye out and stay agile enough to fix everything as soon as it becomes an issue. When something breaks, make sure you have the tools and supplies to fix it, or at least mitigate the impact on business until the repairs can be completed. That’s really the main goal of a maintenance worker – to keep the business running smoothly regardless of the status of most of its equipment. Keep this in mind and you’ll be just fine.

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