Your warehouse management system determines how effective your enterprise is, but it’s easy to fall into lazy practices and neglect money-saving processes. That apathy adds up and eats away at your bottom line. Implementing a few warehouse management best practices will ensure your facilities are running at peak efficiency:
- Choose the best software for your business.
Critical to the success of any warehouse is its ability to automate some processes. The initial implementation of warehouse management software is complicated, so many choose to implement only the bare essentials, adding features after the initial roll out to minimize obstacles in going live.
Warehouse management software automates receiving, put-away, picking, packing, and shipping to streamline your business, but it can also include features like labor management systems, task interleaving, and slotting management. It is extremely important to leverage all of the tools necessary for you to simplify and optimize your warehouse management system.
- Don’t procrastinate.
When you get a new shipment, it’s easy to think “I’ll get to that later,” but the longer you let it sit, the more problems develop. Schedule the time to breakdown and recycle boxes, unpackage products, and stock them in the appropriate location.
If you aren’t able to stock them immediately, ensure that they are placed out of the way of operation, so you don’t cause road blocks and slow business processes. You can use strategies to organize shipments into smaller, more manageable task too. This helps keep inventory moving, even if you can’t stock everything as soon as it arrives.
- Analyze layout.
Optimizing your layout can improve your overall warehouse management simply by rearranging a few products. Best selling items should be easy to access, because staff members are interacting with them most frequently. The easier these items are to find, the more efficient your warehouse will be.
Similarly, if you are shipping certain items together often, it’s only logical to place these items in close proximity. Any movement or action that can be shortened, removed, or reworked helps play a small role in creating a more efficient warehouse. Analyzing your sales for patterns can help you determine a warehouse layout that streamlines the picking process.
- Operate in real-time.
Implementing a barcoding, RFID, or other asset tracking system can give you real-time insights into your inventory. This improved visibility can help you reduce losses, increase efficiency, and improve profit margins. Knowing your stock’s availability can help you improve planning for future expenditures and operate with a more “just-in-time” strategy.
- Document and measure results.
As you begin to implement a more efficient warehouse management system, it’s important to document the changes and their results. The documentation can help you train employees on the latest system.
Understanding the results of your new warehouse management system can help you determine if you’ve improved efficiency. This can be a baseline for future changes as well. If you have measurable data that suggests some processes are still inefficient, you can begin to look in to how and why they are slowing you down.
Operating at peak efficiency is a long-term goal, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take small steps to achieve a better warehouse management system. A little organization goes a long way. Strong software, timely stocking, and a logical layout with real-time insights and measureable results can be the strategy you need to run a successful warehouse.
A good place to start is with a free consultation from Imprint Enterprises. Contact us to learn more.
