Best Warehouse Management Practices that Drive Efficiency

March 11, 2020

Warehouse management proves to be a struggle especially with the challenges such as rapidly evolving technology, increasing competition domestically and overseas, and freight conflicts. In order to better address these issues, warehouse owners adapt to certain methods that would make their work flow more efficient. Below are the best warehouse management practices that drive efficiency.

Follow 80/20 Rule

Items that are frequently ordered together should also be stored together to minimise picking and keeping time. Warehouses that keep detailed inventory logs and purchase records understand the patterns that develop, but they’re doing something extra with that information that allows orders to be picked more accurately and in less time.

The 80/20 rule says that 20 percent of your inventory is probably included in 80 percent of your orders. This means that some items are far more popular than others. Successful warehouse managers are organizing inventory so that the most commonly ordered items are also the most accessible and closest to the shipping and receiving docks. This means that the most-handled items in the facility take the least time to stock and the least time to pick, and that adds up to huge time savings.

Optimise Labour Efficiency with New Technology

Labour makes up a huge proportion of costs for most warehousing operations and it is difficult to cut labour costs without sacrificing your capacity to get work done. Still, warehouses can increase labour efficiency by adopting new technologies that help workers perform their jobs more efficiently. Having mobile workstations in the warehouse can be a great help in cutting labour costs.

These mobile workstations are easily pushed around the warehouse by workers and can be configured with bar-code scanners and label printers, allowing workers to put away new inventory and pick orders without walking back and forth to a stationary workstation. Replacing obsolete and stationary computers with mobile workstations reduces the number of walking steps for workers, leading to huge productivity gains as each worker is empowered to pick and put away more items per hour.

Minimise Receiving and Shipping Errors

Every warehouse company wants to increase revenue, and in order to do so, cost reduction must be employed. One of the ways you can reduce the costs in your operation is by minimising the errors in both receiving and shipping processes. Accurate shipping starts with accurate receiving – new inventory needs to be labelled and sorted correctly to ensure that it can be found in the right place when it’s time to fill an order. Mobile workstations allow new inventory to be received, counted, labelled, and sorted in one location, without the in-between steps that lead to inevitable distractions and invariably result in mislabelled inventory and shipping errors. Accurate receiving also minimizes lost inventory and allows warehouses to carry less safety stock – that’s putting money right back in your pockets.

For more information on the best warehouse management practices that drive efficiency, consult Challenge Packaging and Warehousing Solutions. We provide timely service that you can rely on. We deal directly with the owner to ensure that your critical deadlines are met 100 percent of the time.

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