When Morgan Weis, a TFS account executive, visits facilities to discover what’s on executives’ minds, she hears a lot about safety. That’s not a big surprise, since it has always been a major concern. However, when many businesses transformed the way they operated during the pandemic, they found their safety practices—already a touchy subject—just couldn’t keep pace.

For example, as many facilities saw organic growth from e-commerce, they also began keeping more inventory on hand. That meant warehouse space became tighter, making it more difficult to safely maneuver forklifts. Add the “Great Resignation” and employee retention into the mix and many companies realized they needed to get serious about workers’ well-being.

If you're being asked to drive more uptime and operational productivity in your facility—and who isn't feeling this pressure these days? — you'll be happy to learn about some overlooked areas of improvement right under your nose. Just three manageable—but meaningful — changes to your fleet management program can supercharge your warehouse productivity.

If it feels like fleet management is a battle between corporate management and facilities, that’s because it often is. But it doesn’t need to be.

In fact, both groups can “win”—and when that happens, so does the overall company.

Blake Tucker, Regional Vice President, TFS, has seen this struggle occur in many companies—and has tips on how to fix it. However, it’s important to first understand why corporate executives and plant managers have different priorities and perceived benefits of fleet management enhancements.

What if I told you there's a relatively simple and affordable way to dramatically increase productivity and uptime in your warehouse? In fact, you may already have it in place—but if your company is like most, you're probably underutilizing it.

It's a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS).

Is a hidden cost lurking in your facility?

If your company is like most companies, you're spending significant—and unnecessary—money on rental equipment. And that cost is flying under the radar.

While practically every facility needs rental equipment occasionally, rentals should be a short-term solution. But, once rentals are on site, they often get lost in the mix. The supply chain crisis only compounded this issue, since rentals spiked as companies waited months for equipment.

The fleet management playbook for on-road trucks and commercial vehicles has evolved a great deal over the past 25 years. It’s truly inspiring to see the strides made in terms of operational productivity, safety, and sustainability.

However, there’s another fleet, equally important in terms of keeping businesses running, that has not made the same advancements. Forklift fleet management remains largely stuck in the past.

Smart homes. Smartphones. Smart…warehouses? In a time when the term "smart" is bolted onto nearly every aspect of our lives, it can be difficult to pin down what this ubiquitous term actually means. As TFS knows from experience, however, accelerating or enhancing warehouse operations rarely begins with flicking a switch.

TFS employees visit thousands of facilities each year. That's how we know that even the most respected names in manufacturing and distribution—Fortune 500 companies with huge budgets—are struggling.

While these big companies have more advantages than most of their peers, they still deal with long MHE lead times, labor shortages, and extreme pressure from the C-suite. We often find that material handling execs have no idea how many MHEs they have overall, let alone in different locations. They've usually lost track of the expensive rentals they're using to fill the gaps while they wait for equipment. And forget about getting the data they need…

The only thing that’s remained constant in material handling during the past few years is change. That’s already continued in 2023 as economic predictions are already shifting from a definite recession to the economy remaining on a growth trajectory.  The advanced technology and social shifts in terms of workforce and consumer demand volatility make this a difficult management environment for facility leaders.

Times are tumultuous right now, so it might feel like your company may have to choose between increasing profit and boosting sustainability—but the good news is that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, when it comes to material handling, just asking the right questions can unlock leaner, cleaner, greener, and more profitable decisions.