Designing an efficient workplace increases productivity in manufacturing and assembly operations, where work processes have short cycle times and may be repeated all day long. But in the warehouse, where much of the work is performed "on the move" and some tasks may be performed only sporadically, we have paid little attention to workplace details.

It's too bad this subject gets so little attention, since good workplace design can boost productivity in the warehouse. Let's look at some ways to do that.

We can define the workplace as everything that is not a product. In a warehouse, that would include racks, containers, carts, benches, instructions, systems and peripheral devices. The way these items are arranged is important.

Designers of assembly workstations always place the most commonly used parts where they're easiest to reach. We do the same in the pick face when we slot the most popular products in the "golden zone" between waist and shoulder height. But we could also do that with materials at a packing station, or by placing shipping cartons for the largest customer closest to the product totes' arrival point.

The picking cart should be easy to move – i.e., pushing beats pulling. The pick list and other materials, like labels and bags, should be kept in fixed locations that allow the picker to keep both hands free.

Instructions to the operator must be easy to find and follow. Recently, I saw a pick list that was eight feet long! It required a tedious search by each picker for picks in his or her zone. Then, the list had to be refolded to fit back into the tote. The pickers also were burdened with information that wouldn't be needed until later in the process. A summary page at the beginning of the list would have made the picks clearly visible and speeded the picking considerably.

It's easy to set up a conveyor along a pick front at a comfortable height of 30 inches. But if we put a 12- or 16-inch box on it, that would raise the open top to almost 4 feet. If the flaps are open, that would add another 6-8 inches – and an abrasive edge to boot. Setting the conveyor at 24 inches instead helps a great deal. Restraining the flaps, moreover, makes the putting process safer and more efficient.

Speaking of conveyors, avoid putting them into production before work processes have been finalized. In one application I saw, conveyors that fed totes to a packing station and took filled cartons to a shipping sorter had been properly designed and approved for purchase. Later, though, someone realized that they were producing four empty totes for every shipping carton. A manual work-around solution that returned the empty totes to the pickers ended up compromising what otherwise would have been a good design.

When designing workstations, don't just consider cost; think about efficiency, too. For example, tabletop scanners for packing benches may be a little more expensive than hand-helds, but the extra cost may be justified because they let the operator use both hands to orient and pack products.

It's worth focusing on workplace improvements. After all, the more efficient we make each workstation, the fewer of them we will need.