What company can work without forklifts in warehouse activities? The control and management of forklift fleets is one of the strategic factors within logistics activities.

There are some trends regarding the management of forklifts:

1) Search for SAVING
2) Pay attention to ERGONOMICS
3) Increasing focus on SAFETY
4) search for AUTOMATION solutions
5) increase in PRODUCTIVITY
6) adoption of VISIBILITY and CONTROL systems.

How to run a forklifts fleet optimization project?

The objectives are:

• obtain visibility on expenditure in terms of TCO (total cost of ownership):
• gain visibility on the services requested / used with related KPIs;
• rationalize the fleet based on actual needs;
• identify internal best practices;
• obtain economies of scale and standardization (where possible).

The first step of the analysis consists in mapping the existing situation (AS-IS), in terms of:

1) definition of the scope of expenditure and cost components;
2) execution of a comprehensive census of the vehicle fleet;
3) detection of the required service specifications.

The second step is the analysis of different alternative scenarios (TO-BE): multiple variables are considered to create a SWOT analysis that identifies the costs and benefits of the various possible solutions.

The third phase coincides with the market tender: once selected one or more scenarios, the tender is organized to select the partner supplier.

Finally, the fourth and last step is the implementation of the chosen solution.

To explore the potential of an optimization and cost reduction project on forklifts, send an e-mail to info@smartvco.com