As an eCommerce company, maintaining a warehouse to control the movement of goods and optimise your order fulfilment process is probably at the top of your priority list. However, it is important to remind yourself that maintaining the warehouse is just as crucial to your supply chain performance.
An important part of maintaining your warehouse is cleaning it regularly and ensuring that the goods stored in it are kept in perfect condition till they are shipped out. But a lot of companies take this process for granted and don’t assign enough budget to warehouse cleaning.
Read on to learn why warehouse cleaning is so important, and some steps you can take to ensure that your warehouse is always clean.
Why is Warehouse Cleaning Important?
At the outset, it may seem like warehouses don’t play that much of a crucial role in your order fulfilment process, but this would undermine their importance. Even though they are predominantly used to store goods while they await picking and shipping, warehouses should be maintained properly.
Depending on the type of warehouse you choose for your goods, the requirements and policies for cleaning it might be different. All these factors make it important for you to create the right warehouse cleaning schedules and processes to guide your warehouse workers.
Without proper sanitation and cleaning, the goods in your warehouse might gather a lot of dust and dirt, and may even increase the odds of mould, bacteria or mildew growing on them. With the help of proper warehouse cleaning solutions, you can not only keep your products clean but also prevent potential health hazards.
A dirty or unhygienic warehouse facility will also affect the productivity levels of your workers and impact the daily workflow. Not to forget, it will negatively impact your employee safety and their job satisfaction levels.
8 Primary Components of Cleaning a Warehouse
With the aforementioned points of importance in mind, it is clear that warehouse cleaning is important. Now look at the primary components you should know about while cleaning your warehouse.
1. Floor De-greasing and Cleaning
When preparing a cleaning plan for your warehouse, you must include specific cleaning practices for high-traffic areas such as the docking areas. This is typically an area where a lot of packaging material could accumulate and cause clutter. Assigning periodic cleaning duties - daily, weekly and monthly - to workers for such areas is a good idea.
As a part of this component of warehouse cleaning, you will first focus on removing the debris left behind from cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, and more. You will then need to use a detergent, disinfectant and warehouse cleaning chemicals to sweep the floors of the docking area. Once the area is cleaned, ensure to dry it completely to avoid any falls or slips.
2. Mezzanine and Rack Cleaning
When you are deep cleaning your warehouse, one of the areas you should focus on for cleaning is your mezzanine and racking areas. The aim here is to deploy the right warehouse tools for the task as cleaning these areas can be quite tricky.
You can use a broom or floor sweeper to clean the mezzanine floors and ensure that the equipment is in good condition. Next, you should use a damp mop to clean the area more thoroughly.
You can then sanitise the area to eliminate bacteria and dust the racking system to get rid of any accumulated dust. All of these steps should be carried out periodically though very frequent cleaning is not necessary.
3. Staff Washrooms
Maintaining hygiene and cleanliness for your employees is as important as improving the condition of your warehouse. A clean warehouse should also include clean staff washrooms for workers to ensure their health and well-being.
Staff washrooms are dirtier than most other areas of a warehouse and hence they require you to pay more attention to their cleanliness. Some of the common steps to consider in the process of cleaning staff washrooms include: disinfecting the surfaces, cleaning and wiping down all the bathroom fixtures, washing and sanitising the floor areas, and disinfecting the sink and pot.
4. Machine and Equipment Cleaning
Most machines and equipment in your warehouse can be cleaned using a duster or broom, but some might require using a vacuum cleaner. Industrial vacuum cleaners can help you clean equipment by removing dust and debris from them.
Moreover, you can also use sweepers and scrubbers to remove dirt and grime from your machines and equipment so you can get rid of the smallest particles. Additionally, you can use air blowers and extractors to clean specific parts of your machines and equipment thoroughly.
Deploy deep cleaning and degreasing techniques to remove any visible grease and dirt from your equipment thus maintaining their original condition for a longer duration.
5. Air Filtration and Ventilation Cleaning
In most warehouses, the HVAC systems are central to not just the workplace conditions for the workers, but also the preservation of the stored goods. It is important to clean your air filtration and ventilation systems thoroughly to remove contaminants that may ruin the air quality inside the warehouse.
Additionally, poor air quality may also negatively affect the quality of your goods and contaminate them. If the goods you store are sensitive to dust particles, consider installing air purifiers with HEPA filters to help you eliminate even the smallest dust particles.
As a rule of thumb, you should also replace your air filters regularly to maintain the overall air quality in your warehouse.
Other than this, consider using exhaust fans to remove stale air from your HVAC systems and replace it with fresh outdoor air. You can also control pollutants and humidity levels using exhaust fans. Also, clean the air vents periodically by gaining a better understanding of where your vents and ventilation equipment are located.
6. Cleaning Cafeterias and Kitchens
Consider the cafeteria and kitchen areas of your warehouse and the appliances you have in those areas. These specific areas are most likely to collect a lot of grime and grease from cooking or heating food.
Your warehouse cannot be considered fully clean unless you have cleaned these areas diligently. Since these areas also experience a lot of wear and tear, it is recommended that you clean them at least once every shift.
You may need to pay even more attention to these areas if you have a lot of employees visiting these areas during each shift.
7. Car Park Cleaning
Keeping the external areas of your warehouse clean is as important as cleaning the internal areas. Outside areas such as car parking, loading docks and workshops are instrumental to your logistics management and should thus be cleaned properly.
Not only this, you must ensure that these are free of debris and dust, with the help of pressure washers and other similar equipment. These warehouse cleaning equipment are designed to get into every nook and cranny of an area and help you clean these external areas more thoroughly considering they are more likely to collect dust.
As a part of maintaining the outside areas, you should also use pesticides to get rid of any unwanted pests and rodents. As a result, you can also prevent them from entering your warehouse and damaging your goods.
8. External Fascia and Lighting Cleaning
While your warehouse floors are likely to be covered in debris after a busy shift, the external fascia of your building is also prone to it. To keep the external parts of your warehouse clean, you should consider using a pressure washer or comprehensive cleaning system.
These systems can help you access the hard-to-reach areas and your building facade more easily so that you can clean them. You should also clean the dirt, dust and debris from ceilings, walls and light fixtures to remove any build-up that has collected over time.
With the help of these cleaning mechanisms and equipment, you’ll be able to improve the brightness and clarity of the light coming in from the fixtures more effectively.
8 Useful Tips to Keep Your Warehouse Tidy at All Times
Now that we have learned about the primary components of warehouse cleaning more effectively, let us look into some of the most useful tips that can help you maintain cleanliness and hygiene.
#1 Prepare a Warehouse Cleaning Plan
While it is easy to ensure that parts of your warehouse are cleaned now and then, it is important to design and prepare a comprehensive warehouse cleaning operations plan that acts as a guide for workers and cleaning staff.
It is also important to establish a cleaning routine that boosts your warehouse efficiency, productivity and helps you balance your resources effectively. You should also execute the process smoothly by integrating it into your operational workflow.
Without a plan, you may have to rely completely on the workers’ commitment to cleaning and assume whether they clean it or not. The plan should include the areas that should be cleaned regularly and the steps the workers should take to keep them clean. It should also make provisions for a cleaning schedule and a list of policies workers should follow to keep the warehouse clean regularly.
#2 Restock Cleaning Supplies Regularly
Whether you outsource all the cleaning to warehouse cleaning contractors or do it in-house by employing a dedicated cleaning staff, you should regularly stock up on the necessary supplies.
Your warehouse cleaning equipment should include at least the necessities such as brooms, mops, sanitisers, floor cleaning liquid, soap, etc. These are some of the things that will help you ensure that you can clean your warehouse as and when any messes happen without impacting your daily operations.
Remember that if you tend to run out of warehouse cleaning products regularly, you could end up discouraging employees from keeping it clean. They might even have to walk long distances or take up the responsibility of restocking them, thus wasting their productive hours.
#3 Assign Cleaning Responsibilities to Employees
With a warehouse cleaning plan in place, you may have already defined the areas to be cleaned and the process to be followed to clean these areas. However, you also need to ensure that the warehouse is maintained properly daily by establishing some basic rules for cleanliness.
With this in mind, we recommended creating a cleaning plan that delegates and assigns cleaning responsibilities to different workers. Assign specific areas to your employees that they can take cleaning responsibility and accountability for.
Employees should take ownership of the warehouse and take care of assigned space with tasks such as arranging new stocks, sorting and cleaning plastics and packaging materials, as well as cleaning equipment.
To motivate your employees, it is a good idea to emphasise to employees that they can enjoy many benefits in the workplace by maintaining a clean and organised warehouse.
#4 Maintain Regular Turnover of Inventory
Your inventory turnover can quite literally affect the performance of your warehouse. After all every piece of stock that sits on your shelves and collects dust can negatively impact your bottom line.
As a result, your inventory turnover if mismanaged, can waste your warehouse space and make it even more expensive for you to manage the leftover stock. More importantly, regular turnover inventory will ensure that your warehouse is not overflowing with stock, which can make cleaning it very difficult.
#5 Prepare a Waste Disposal Plan
Warehouses can end up generating a lot of waste including basic materials such as paper or plastic and even hazardous materials. Disposing them properly is a part of your warehouse cleaning process and should be taken seriously.
This is where a comprehensive waste management or disposal plan comes into the picture. Having a proper plan in place can help you prevent overflowing bins or foul smells on the premises and avoid any other issues that can result from having too much office garbage.
As a part of your waste disposal plan, you should also prepare a recycling plan to manage all the recyclable materials coming out of your warehouse. This can include wooden planks, cardboard boxes or more. You must prepare these materials before the recycling facility can process them.
#6 Ensure Adequate Labeling for Storage Solutions
Sorting and efficient storage of goods in your warehouse is only the start of a cleaner and more productive warehouse management. What’s even more important is that these storage solutions are legible for the workers in your warehouse. An organised warehouse is easier to clean and maintain consistently.
With that in mind, consider labelling and appropriate marketing on floor areas and storage that can guide your workers with the flow of goods and movement in the warehouse. For instance, labelling specific storage boxes with item names ensures that the warehouse employees can find individual items for picking more easily.
You can also have designated areas in the warehouse for different kinds of storage solutions. As a result, you may want to separate the areas for cardboard boxes, pallets and crates and label them accordingly.
#7 Maintain a Cleaning Schedule
While we have already highlighted the importance of cleaning the warehouse at specific and regular intervals, it is even more crucial to have your cleaning schedule properly charted out. Doing so ensures that the workers are not confused, and always have clarity on the warehouse cleaning best practices and delegation.
Without a predetermined warehouse cleaning schedule or plan, cleaning huge spaces like a warehouse can become a massive undertaking. If your warehouse like most houses an office where administrative tasks are also carried out, you will need to narrow down on cleaning even more strategically.
With special instructions to clean more crucial areas such as loading docks or dirty spaces, which are prone to awful smells and overflowing garbage. Other areas may not need to be cleaned very frequently so you can assign a schedule accordingly. To keep track of your cleaning schedule, ensure that you use a checklist and calendar.
#8 Make Plans for Hard-to-Clean Areas
In a typical warehouse, there are plenty of areas that are hard to reach for workers and thus become tricky to clean. Nevertheless, you should make a plan to access these nooks and crannies in your warehouse so that these areas do not get overlooked in terms of cleanliness.
Some of the most common areas that can be deemed hard to clean include the tops of shelves or the cramped spaces underneath them. These areas can quickly accumulate dust and can get easily overlooked without a plan to crack down on these areas and clean them.
One of the best ways to prevent this is to include these areas and related cleaning policies in your cleaning schedule. Guide your workers with the right process and equipment to use so that these areas can be cleaned as effectively as other areas of your warehouse.
Concluding Remarks
Keeping your warehouse tidy might sound like a fairly straightforward process, but depending on the goods you store and the scale of operations you conduct in it, it can get quite complicated.
Warehouse cleaning is necessary for maintaining hygiene and good condition of the stored goods, and to ensure that your employees are productive. Leverage the components and tips mentioned in this guide to come up with the right cleaning plan for your warehouse.
To streamline other parts of the order fulfillment process, and to ensure that your goods are always delivered to customers on time, get a quote from the PACK & SEND website and have professionals handle it for you.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How to keep a warehouse clean?
There are multiple steps that you can take to ensure cleanliness and hygiene in your warehouse. This can include coming up with a comprehensive warehouse cleaning plan, stocking up on the necessary supplies, delegating cleaning responsibilities to workers, and coming up with necessary plans and policies. Once this is done, you must establish a cleaning schedule to be followed so that your warehouse is always clean.
What is the difference between sanitising and disinfecting a warehouse?
While sanitising refers to the steps you will take to kill bacteria that might infect the surfaces in different warehouse areas, disinfecting includes killing viruses also. Every disinfection process will include a sanitisation process, but sanitisation is less rigorous than disinfecting your warehouse.
How frequently should a warehouse be cleaned?
Every area in a warehouse will require different kinds of cleaning protocols and frequencies assigned to them. The most commonly used areas that are prone to getting dirty such as the docking area should be cleaned thoroughly every week, but at least on a surface level every day. Other areas such as washrooms and offices may need to be cleaned every single day.
What materials or equipment can you use to control dust?
Some of the cleaning supplies that you should consider stocking in your warehouse to control dust include dusters, mops, dusters, dust pans, etc. Apart from this, if the goods you store in the warehouse are prone to damage from dust, consider using a vacuum cleaner to thoroughly clean them and keep them dust-free.