In terms of warehouse operations, a good warehouse doesn’t happen by chance. There are ways to improve a warehouse so it runs more efficiently and safely as well as boosts your bottom line. Here are tips to help you make this happen:
Design the Warehouse Efficiently
Aside from ensuring your warehouse is safe, it should be designed to maximize efficiency. A warehouse that operates more efficiently can your company money, accelerates orders fulfillment, minimize the risk of injury to employees, and improve employee satisfaction. Also, you need to document your processes to make sure everybody is aware of layouts and procedures and avoid making mistakes. Try to place top-selling items nearest to the packing stations because they will be picked more often. Items often packed together must be stored adjacent to each other.
Use Labeling and RFID to Track Inventory
Whatever you store in a Belley’s warehouse must be labeled. Establish a detailed labeling plan to let your staff and management to track effectively what comes in and what goes out of the warehouse. Since manual data entry is time-consuming, it offers opportunities for errors and reduces efficiency. The use of barcode and radio frequency identification (RFID) labels reduces the need for manual product entries. Innovative tracking of inventory speeds up and improves data collection accuracy. Also, it reduces errors that arise from manual entry as well as improves picking and tracking.
Be Notified of Any delivery Delays
Work with your vendors to get advanced shipping notifications (ASN) as this will help you prepare to get shipments and reduce the potential of delays and disruptions. You can link ASNs to your warehouse management software. Knowing what’s coming and being aware of delays will ensure smoother warehouse operations.
Get Employee Feedback
Your employees know your warehouse better than anyone. Ask them for advice and recommendations to improve the layout and procedures. Put a suggestion box in a prominent location and consider giving an incentive for the best ideas. Your employees will feel more important if you solicit their input. As a result, they may adopt the changes with more enthusiasm.
Pick the Right Software
When picking warehouse management software, assess software according to the warehouse space, processes, and business needs. The right software is integrated with other business solutions like inventory management, point of sale, e-commerce, and fulfillment orders. Usually, a cloud-based network model lets you connect to other sources of data, services, and systems without the need to implement major projects.
