Three Obstacles to Forklift Flow Efficiency

When everything is working properly in your operation and everybody is working at full speed and with maximum efficiency, it can seem like a ballet. People and equipment are moving with synchronicity, creating a streamlined flow that can be breathtaking.

Unfortunately, in many workplaces that kind of optimal performance rarely, if ever happens. Common obstacles often get in the way. Yet that ideal remains the objective if you want to enhance productivity and get the most out of your business.

Identifying and removing obstacles to flow is one of the most effective strategies for streamlining operations. For forklift operators, three of these hurdles to efficiency seem to pop up over and over again.

Forklift Flow Obstacles — Case Sizes

Most companies don’t have a single product or line of products that are all exactly the same size. Instead, pallets carried by forklifts tend to be composed of cases that are many different shapes, sizes, and weights.

The more consistency you can get with your pallet loads, the easier and more efficient it will be to handle them. Ideally, forklift operators want every pallet to be exactly the same size, weight, and uniformity. A perfect cube, in other words.

While this may not always — if ever — be possible, the more you can move toward that ideal, the better your forklift flow will be.

Forklift Flow Obstacles — Workspace Variations

Forklifts drive over different surfaces and in a wide variety of environments. On any given trip, an operator may encounter smooth pavement or rough, crowded receiving areas or spacious ones, doorways without a grade or ones with steep ramps.

The ideal is a uniform workspace where all the aisles are the same width, where there are always the same number of pedestrians (preferably zero), and where every travel surface is perfectly level.

Again, this probably is not ever possible. But the more you can create a workspace that matches this perfection, the better your forklift flow will be.

Forklift Flow Obstacles — Load Weights

Pallet weights seem like they are getting heavier and heavier. There’s a good reason for that. They are.

From an operational perspective, managers want to maximize their flow. The more work a forklift can perform, the more efficient it is, right? Not always.

When there is a wide variety in the weight of pallets lifted and moved by the forklift, it can create additional challenges for the operator. Drivers who carry the same weight every trip are naturally going to be more productive than those who have to figure out how to handle their payloads every time they perform a task.

Creating uniformity throughout your operations may be a difficult, or even impossible task, but it’s an ideal worth pursuing. Achieving optimal forklift flow is good for operators, good for productivity, and good for your business’s bottom line.