Three Tips to Optimal Warehouse Management

Your warehouse is the action centre for customer fulfilment. Shipments from suppliers and customer orders are received, and packages are shipped out for delivery to the customer. Within the warehouse lies its inventory that must have enough stock to ensure prompt delivery while not needlessly tying up your company's capital. Your warehouse also has its pickers, packers, and shippers who are responsible for the smooth flow of materials within and without.

Achieving an efficient warehouse operation is no small feat, and if you aren't careful, your warehouse can quickly turn into a disaster area. During periods of high activity, disarray can snowball on itself and get out of control. Here are three warehouse management tips for optimising your operation.

Don't Procrastinate about Putting Things Away

When your parents reminded you as a child to put away your toys, little did you know then that it was sound warehouse management advice. When inbound shipments arrive, immediately process and place them into inventory. Putting this off for later will compound your work when other inbound shipments arrive and add to the growing clutter at your receiving dock. Likewise, don't allow untended products to build up in piles elsewhere in your warehouse. They quickly turn into traffic barriers that interfere with efficient picking.

Keep Your Warehouse Organisation Up To Date

Allotting bin sizes and shelving space for your products is a lot of work. While it's understandable that someone would only want to do this once, changes in demand for your products will eventually make your warehouse organisation outdated. Slow moving products located higher in the shelves and away from the shipping dock may eventually become high turnover products because of effective marketing. The products next to the shipping dock that were "hot" several months ago are now getting in the way because they are out of season. Failing to keep your warehouse organisation up to date means it's always suboptimal.

Avoid Manual Data Entry

Not only is manual data entry slow, it is also prone to error. Data entry errors can be off by one or two or by hundreds if a few extra zeros are accidentally entered. This will destroy your inventory accuracy and cause problems with customer fulfilment and order placement with your suppliers. Use bar code scanning and RFID technology for updating your inventory.

To learn how we can help you run a cost-effective, and efficient warehouse, please feel free to give us a call on 03 9566 7249 for a free consultation session.