7 Effective Warehouse Management Tips to Optimize Inventory Control
Your business depends on your warehouse. Whether or not you’re able to meet your customers’ demands, it all depends on your warehouse management. Poor warehouse inventory management leads to inventory loss and supply chain delays. But don’t worry, this article was made to help you. Here are seven effective warehouse management tips that can help improve your inventory control.
1. Plan your warehouse layout
One of the easiest warehouse management tactics you can implement is planning your warehouse layout. Before you fill the warehouse, you must plan every inch of it. Make sure your warehouse space facilitates the exit and entry of goods. Each shelf must be marked so that your staff won’t get confused when stocking and picking the goods. Make sure your warehouse has enough space for pallet jacks or forklifts to move around.
2. Sort out your inbound goods
Your goods should be placed based on the inventory turnover ratio to speed up the picking process. It is strongly recommended to place the top selling items in areas that are easily accessible by your staff, for example near the packing and the shipping area. This will help your staff save a big chunk of time so they can handle other important tasks instead.
To help you figure out your top selling items, consider using an automated inventory solution. It will help you analyze trends and customer demands so you can make better decisions for your business.
3. Conduct regular inventory cycle counts
Don’t just rely on physical counts, you should periodically audit your inventory too. Performing cycle counts are less disruptive than performing physical counts, as you just need to count small subsets of goods in certain locations in the warehouse. Conduct cycle counts at least once every three months to reduce the risk of inventory shrinkage.
4. Prevent unauthorized entry into the warehouse
Preventing problems is better than fixing them. Restricting access to your warehouses will help you prevent inventory loss. Determine those who are eligible to enter the warehouse by providing them with access cards. You can also put some passwords on the warehouse door and require your warehouse staff to put on their uniforms.
5. Make sure all the items are labelled
Check every item in your warehouse and make sure they already have SKUs and barcodes. Also make sure there are no duplicate labels. To help your staff find and pick up stuff faster, you can use an inventory management system that is integrated with SKU or barcode scanners.
6. Implement cross docking
To reduce the time and place of storage of goods, you can try implementing cross docking. You’ll just need to combine materials from different origins into outbound trucks with the same or similar destinations.
You can store the items in a transit warehouse (which is way smaller than a warehouse & has no shelves). But if you don’t have one, then your staff will have to sort the items out put them directly into the outbound trucks.
7. Train your employees regularly
You have to introduce your warehouse compliance and regulations to your employees. Regular employee training is necessary to ensure all the warehouse operations are running well. Monitor the performance of your entire staff and ask them to fill out surveys to help you improve your human resource management.
Controlling inventory in the warehouse will be a lot easier if you use an inventory management system. HashMicro provides an inventory management software that allows you to manage your inventory across multiple warehouses in different locations. The Cloud-based system enables you to track your entire inventory from anywhere.
Related article:
6 Effective Ways to Reduce Inventory Shrinkage & Maintain Correct Inventory Levels