Inventory Management in Warehouses requires more than simply organizing goods (though that certainly helps): It requires the right alignment of network strategy, facility and process engineering, and engineering systems that produce inventory accuracy and visibility. The result is a heightened capacity to deliver to a customer via their preferred sales channel, with a cost-to-serve that serves your bottom line.
Proper warehouse stock management can be challenging but, if you follow this useful advice, you can increase efficiency and reduce costs.
Reevaluate
Your Warehouse Design.
The layout of your warehouse must ease logical stock flow, from receiving and inspection through to picking and packaging, to make sure that operations move quickly and smoothly. A bloated, congested layout makes it hard for inventory management personnel to get stock and leaves insufficient space for important processes like receiving, which raises the chance of human error. It is particularly important to reevaluate your warehouse layout to accommodate increases in company sales, which lead to increased space requirements.
When
Revising Your Warehouse Layout, ask yourself the following:
Does my present design utilize space efficiently?Do my workers have sufficient room to perform their tasks properly?How long has it been since I last updated my layout? Have we experienced a substantial increase in sales volume in that time?Do I wish to integrate any particular stock logistics approaches in my design (e.g. cross-docking, wave picking, etc.)?
Reorganize
Your Stock Keeping Units (SKUs).
To ensure efficient operations and stock management on your warehouse, organize products so that they’re easily accessible to inventory management employees. This principle applies not just on a warehouse’s general layout but to your SKUs, too. Strategically sort your SKUs and use slotting to group items together based on size, velocity, seasonality and other characteristics to reduce the amount of time employees spend searching for specific items.
You might also think about producing zones based on pick type to simplify order picking and reslotting. Place high volume, quickly moving SKUs near shipping places in easy-to-reach locations so employees can retrieve them quickly. By identifying and eliminating poor performing products, you are able to dramatically reduce inventory levels and better enable employee efficacy during order fulfillment.
Invest
in Technology.
A Warehouse Management System (WMS) is a good place to start. A WMS is software designed to support and optimize warehouse operation. A WMS can incorporate systems and workflows, strategically organize execution systems, increase inventory visibility, mitigate the risk of demand volatility and much more to guarantee peak inventory management warehouse performance.
It’s also wise to invest in systems with business intelligence (BI) capabilities. It is BI uses technology to gather, analyze and transform data into actionable data. You may use this information to forecast inventory demand based on goods and vendor performance, reduce excess inventory, place together fill rate reports, execute real-time inventory tracking and get an accurate account of what is in-stock at any given point in time.
Automate
Everything.
Among the benefits of buying technology is getting the ability to automate essential workflows, including information collection, barcoding, scanning, picking and packaging, shipping, inventory tracking and much more. Automated stock warehouse management allows for greater scalability, reduces the probability of human error, increases efficiency and saves money and time on manual labor. As soon as you’ve implemented inventory management warehouse technologies, be careful to regularly reevaluate your automation plan to ensure that it continues to meet your business’s efficiency criteria.
Empower
Your employees.
Among the greatest methods to enhance overall stock warehouse management is to make it much easier for warehouse employees to do their jobs — and to perform them efficiently. This may be as straightforward as setting strict security standards to protect your employees from possible harm on the warehouse floor or adjusting your cleaning schedule to a more optimum moment. Produce a thorough business strategy so that it’s easier for employees to identify where high-volume products are situated.
From a technical perspective, use automation to maintain accurate records of all warehouse tasks which employees can refer to on a minute’s notice. At any time you employ new technologies, take the opportunity to sponsor mandatory training sessions and familiarize all warehouse employees with new applications and systems. By empowering your staff with this valuable knowledge, you present them with additional opportunities to maximize stock management on a regular basis.
It goes without saying that an organized warehouse is an efficient warehouse. By implementing the practices listed above, along with Investing in the right software programs, you are able to simplify day-to-day operations, improve employee morale and move inventory faster.
Accurate Warehousing And Distribution have packaged our services to fit all your business needs, whether you require long-term or short-term warehouse solutions. We understand that business operations are highly flexible, and therefore our obligation to offer flexible services to fit the requirements of the customer. We offer competitive prices because we understand the essence of business success. We know that our success depends on the success of your business. We do our part by offering the best prices in the market, to help you run your business successfully.