If you spend a lot of time trying to locate items in your warehouse, it means that there is a lack of proper warehouse inventory management. Having inventory management strategies and tools will help you improve warehouse efficiency significantly.
Here are 7 essential strategies that will help in improving warehouse inventory management.
Maximize Space
Design the warehouse to maximize the storage space. Consider using the vertical space rather than just focusing on expanding the footprint of the warehouse. Invest in different types and varieties of shelving that you can use. For instance, storing small goods on pallet racks will waste space and you can lose or misplace items easily.
Use different types of shelving for different products based on their size and ensure there is ample space for the forklifts and weight carrying equipment to move around. Bins must be properly planned and marked to avoid stocking of goods at inappropriate places.
Promote Safety Measures
Unsafe working conditions will harm your employees and the reputation of your business alike. Moreover, not having safety measures will put your business in a financial risk in the form of litigation, damages and increased insurance premiums.
Do an exhaustive assessment of the risks and determine ways to mitigate them. Employee safety training is extremely important; encourage the staff to use personal protective equipment at all times. Ensure that heavy duty equipment like a forklift, etc., is operated only by experienced and trained employees. Mark the warehouses with safety protocols like the use of safe distance from danger zones, self-protective gear, etc.
Implement Weighing Systems
Having efficient weighing systems like floor scales ensure that you can accurately weigh the goods, which is necessary to meet manufacturing regulations and satisfy customers. Moreover, you need to comply with shipping regulations too. You must check that the necessary weight requirements are met before they are shipped from the warehouse. Overweight goods can pose a danger while being transported and you can incur heavy penalties for the same.
Apply Cross Docking
This is a popular supply chain management process which focuses on reducing the shelf storage time of stocks. Cross-docking facilitates quick transportation of the warehouse goods to all the outbound carriers that will take stocks to distribution centers or retail centers. You must ensure that the warehouse layout supports cross-docking.
Perform Counting Cycles
Instead of doing the year-end physical count for your inventory numbers, you should start performing cyclic counting on a regular basis. You can conduct them either on a monthly, quarterly or even daily basis based on the quantity of warehouse inventory. Carrying out regular counts helps in identifying errors and shrinking of the inventory, thus allowing you to correct them before it is too late.
Prioritize Quality Control
Check every order before shipping it as failure to do so will result in unhappy customers. Quality control includes checking the condition of the goods, accuracy and product packaging before the final shipment is done. The quality assessment process can also be extended to order fulfillment. For example, you can offer your customers real-time shipping notifications and delivery confirmation, feedback mechanisms and customer satisfaction survey once the deliveries are done.
Use Right Technology
It is possible to observe massive warehouse transformation by technology as automated solutions help in reducing the number of human errors while processing inventory data, thus leading to greater accuracy. Right technology like warehouse inventory management allows you to record inventory entering the warehouse and manage the location and movements of stock within the warehouse. Moreover, you can use it to generate orders and picking instructions, and record stock movements and shipments.
By improving inventory and warehouse management accuracy, you can reduce expenses, increase savings and profitability, enhance customer service and boost efficiency.
4 Comments on “How to Improve Warehouse Inventory Management: 7 Must-Know Strategies”
By improving inventory and warehouse management accuracy, you can reduce expenses, increase profitability, enhance customer service and boost efficiency. Thanks for sharing such informative tips.
Thanks for sharing this informative strategies on how to improve warehouse inventory management.
Thanks @george Devin and @PDQ Staffing for stopping by and sharing your thoughts. Glad you found the information helpful.
I personally believe that people who are running a warehouse must invest in turntable wrapping equipment that will keep their products protected from any possible damage that may occur during the shipment. I also agree with you that they must design their facility in a way that the storage space will be maximized. It’s a good thing that you shared here as well that floor scales must be implemented.