One of the most important aspects of maintaining a warehouse is keeping it clean on a daily basis. This storage is a wide open space so it easily becomes dirty again. Be sure to set a schedule for cleaners or your workers to clean the warehouse, maintaining a standard which reflects on your company’s values, keeps stock clean and ensures your staff are working safely in an environment they feel comfortable in.
The best way to ensure the cleanliness and safety of the warehouse is to have a comprehensive daily cleaning schedule. You can easily hire a Sydney commercial cleaning company to help you maintain the warehouse.
Here are some 10 important warehouse cleaning tips
Clear bins daily
Bins should never get to the point of overflowing. If that happens your staff and visitors to the warehouse might not dump litter where they should which can cause additional hazards for yourself and your workers.
Assign specific cleaning task to employees
The best way to ensure specific spaces are kept clean is to assign them to individuals on-site. A picker can handle some space on a conveyor belt or shelves.
This means that workers cannot leave a mess for whoever is on shift after them that would require further cleaning. Doing this daily maintains the workload, making every shift more efficient.
These responsibilities can be as easy as: sweeping the floor, clearing debris, giving equipment a shine up, sorting materials and addressing incidents such as coffee cups left at stations, which is easy to resolve.
Have plenty of cleaning supplies for employees to use
You can’t ask staff to keep facilities clean without giving them the correct equipment as they go on shift. Making them search the warehouse for cleaning equipment will put them off cleaning the warehouse in general. Walking a long distance to a bin is also a waste of their own time as well as yours. If they’ll be managing litter or wiping down machinery, be sure they have the right material for cleaning.
Practise a ‘clean as you go’ policy
It doesn’t matter how clean you keep your facilities during scheduled cleans if machinery is always causing a mess every other time. It is highly recommended that your staff clean litter such as metal shavings as they work maintaining the standard set by your firm and keeping the area hazard free. If you plan an operation which results in stock being left on the floor or around the warehouse make sure it is tidied up before becoming hazardous and causing an incident.
Label the floors
Floor labelling is designed to keep sectors organised as well as making stock easy to identify. Keeping a record of which isle stock is stored on makes accessing it much easier and much less time-consuming to collect. This will also make assigning individual members of staff areas to clean much easier as it will be labelled for them.
Put barriers up
There are a range of barriers you can get for your warehouse to ensure complete safety of your staff members and keep restricted access to vehicles such as forklifts. This not only keeps your warehouse cleaner, but also ensures organisation.
Different types of barriers include: Bollard Systems, Crash Barrier Systems, Pedestrian Barriers, Racking Barriers and Column Guards.
Provide staff with safety equipment
Whether it’s a high-vis vest, a flashlight for those who check machinery or a safety helmet when around construction, your top concern should be your employee’s safety. Keep equipment in-check as it is the only protection your employees have when on-site. Assign workers duties to check that equipment is functioning as it should be.
Turn stock regularly
On top of being costly and wasting warehouse space, stock that is out of date sits gathering dust causing complications for the whole warehouse. Always be sure to check your stock is accurately kept up to date so no dust is gathered by stock that’s been there for a large amount of time.
Store in-demand stock close to freighting
Products more in-demand and moved around more often should be kept closer to shipping, this will allow for more efficient movement of goods across the warehouse as well as saving time. Stock in high demand is easier to handle on a regular basis if it is closer and more accessible. Transporting it across less space also means avoiding some potential hazards that could occur when transporting stock from one end of your warehouse to the other. In demand products can include food products which may require ambient or cold storage warehousing.
Hire a commercial cleaning company to deep clean
A commercial cleaning company can help you clean the warehouse effectively. The size of your warehouse makes it difficult for you and your staff to undertake the cleaning.
A commercial cleaning company in Sydney has a fleet of cleaning professionals who can be scheduled to clean the warehouse on weekends or after hours. This saves your warehouse time and money.
Here are some ways how they can assist:
Warehouse floor cleaning
Floors have to be swept, vacuumed, mop and polished regularly to keep them clean and accident-free.
Grease or tar on the floors can become slip hazards for employees so cleaning the floors can minimise risk of workplace accidents.
Warehouse toilet cleaning
A warehouse has common shared places like bathrooms and toilets. These places are prone to germs and bacteria and will have to be regularly cleaned and sanitised.
Warehouse dusting and sanitising
A commercial cleaning team can regularly dust and sanitise the warehouse. High touchpoints like door handles, time card machine, intercoms, power switches and light switches all need sanitising to minimise risk of human to human infection.
The more you clean and maintain your warehouse the less cost your business will have to pay in sick leave and workplace accidents.
Consider a commercial cleaning as part of your warehouse expenditure. Have a warehouse that needs cleaning? Call DryTech Commercial Cleaning Sydney today.
DryTech Commercial Cleaning is one of Sydney’s best commercial cleaning companies. For more information about our wide range of services or a free quote call: 02 9161 1621 or email: [email protected]