Over the last two months, we posed the question: ”Is figuring out the temperature of your warehouse like trying to understand alchemy?” because that’s something that we ask ourselves here at Dickson all too often. These questions inevitably lead to more questions about warehouse mapping, and honestly, answers are hard to come by. Temperature mapping your warehouse, whether that is a medical device, pharmaceutical, or food warehouse, is a tricky science.
So, we’ve decided to tackle all those questions one-by-one. Last month we analyzed how seasonal changes influence the temperature of your warehouse, and the month before that, we took on the loading dock. This month, we are taking a look at your warehouse office. Thus, this is the third article in our series of posts titled, ”Understanding Warehouse Temperatures.” Hopefully by the end of this series, we will have given you a lot of new information on the delicate science of warehouse temperature mapping. We originally thought that this series would be over after just three blogs, but we have many more problems to solve! Thus, we are going to continue this series into next month, and hopefully beyond. Check back in next month’s issue of Dickson Insights for the fourth article in this series, or go to blog.dicksondata.com/tag/warehouse to read all of the posts before they are published.
So, what’s the deal with the warehouse office?
The warehouse office is a section of a warehouse that houses no products, is kept at room temperature, and has some sort of mechanism for producing coffee. This is the area where the warehouse supervisor usually sits, and where employees may take lunch, ask questions, and generally not ship, organize, or monitor products. It’s where the office work happens for the warehouse.
What makes a warehouse office interesting is that it’s usually inside the warehouse, and not in a separate building. It can be a makeshift desk right in the middle of things, or its own room, separated by four walls in a corner of the warehouse.
The reason that this intrigues us is because the warehouse office may have a different temperature, different HVAC settings, or a different HVAC system all together than other parts of your warehouse. Heat likes to travel, which can be an issue for warehouses that house temperature sensitive materials.
Combatting the effects of your warehouse office on the rest of your warehouse is not an easy task, and worse it is one that goes unnoticed for many, many warehouses. We suggest first analyzing what makes your warehouse office temperature different from the other portions of your warehouse. Next, place a temperature monitor at the critical points of airflow entry into and out of your warehouse office (windows and doors, usually). Next, wait. Analyze that data, and see if the temperature of your office is really affecting the other portions of your warehouse.
