Reasons Why a Warehouse Inventory Management is Ideal

While you may think that warehouse inventory management is simply the practice of arranging your inventory so that it can be found quickly, there is more to it than that. Good warehouse organization is not only about putting everything in its place, it’s about maximizing productivity while saving time and money to increase inventory accuracy.

Some practices like labeling are intuitive and can be done without the use of software. Others like barcodes, scanners, RFID systems, automatic identification and wireless LANs are all part of warehouse and inventory management systems that focus on monitoring the flow of products and enhancing accuracy with software.

Today, I’ve gathered some helpful tips on a better warehouse inventory management and improve a warehouse’s performance that can be applied to any warehouse operation, with or without software.

Good warehouse inventory management starts with upkeep

Inspect your operation regularly and review your warehouse’s organization – just because it was well-organized when you initially started, doesn’t mean that it meets your current standards.

You’ll want to look for things like: is the stock located in a way that it allows your crew to easily and a safely access it? Are the fasting moving SKUs located at between waist and shoulder height so that they be quickly retrieved? Is there a designated area for damaged items, and are the damaged items being dealt with daily? Without regular upkeep, a well-organized warehouse can quickly become disorganized and difficult to navigate which can slow your pickers down and lead to safety hazards. Rather than waiting for operations to slow down before you decide to reorganize, have a daily checklist for the manager, and hold him or her responsible for the upkeep of the warehouse. Click here to learn more about warehouse optimization.

Know your high sellers

By placing your high volume items closer to the shipping area and making sure they are easily accessible, you’ll eliminate a lot of unnecessary labor time, and your employees will think you are super considerate. Win-win! Obviously, this should only apply to your proven top sellers to avoid unnecessary physical inventory re-allocation.

Utilize cycle counts

wait until the annual physical inventory count comes to perform regular inventory control audits.   Perform cycle counts and analyze their discrepancies to perfect the time it should take you to go through all locations. For those of you who don’t know, cycle counting is a type of perpetual inventory counting that takes places in waves over time. Only small subsets of inventory are counted during each wave. It’s good to have cycle counts go through all locations every quarter so that you have a more accurate back-office system. Check out our article on improving your cycle count procedure if this sounds daunting to you!

Minimize unauthorized traffic

Do you ever notice someone walking around your warehouse and think, who is this guy? A new hire? A lost pizza delivery kid looking for your shipping office? Someone from customer service picking something they shouldn’t? Eliminate the risk of having unauthorized people walking around the place where your inventory is stashed.  Give your employees some kind of an identifier (like special t-shirts) that can distinguish those working in the warehouse and those that shouldn’t.

Make room for receiving

A lot of inventory errors can happen at receiving if your warehouse inventory management personnel don’t have enough space to work.  Avoid giving them a small office at the end of the room. Eliminating receiving errors will relieve you from all kinds of ugly issues later in the selling cycle, like losing time, money, and credibility.

Implement quality control

Avoid having to fix your mistakes after the fact by double checking your orders. This is called quality control and adds another layer of responsibility.  The process usually involves checking a picked item against an order to make sure it’s the correct SKU and quantity. This is also the time for QC to check the item for damage to make sure that it is being shipped in it’s advertised condition and that the customer receiving it will be happy. Get one of your veterans to do this and save your business a lot of money.