Having an organized warehouse helps your company run efficiently. This means your warehouse space needs to be optimized to fit your needs. The better your warehouse is organized, the more quickly your team can receive merchandise, prepare orders, load and ship containers, and maintain customer satisfaction.
Implement these six tips to maintain organization in your warehouse.
1. Prioritize Safety
Your warehouse needs to be organized around the safety of your employees. You want them to be as safe as possible so they can continue to perform their work. This also increases the efficiency of your warehouse.
2. Organize for Efficiency
Put the most commonly used items and tools in easily accessible places. For instance, if you commonly ship multiple items at the same time to the same destination, keep these items in the same area. Your employees can quickly locate them and load them on the truck. Also, keep the packaging, tape, and scissors together in a bin for easy access. Additionally, pre-build boxes and move the scale to a more convenient place.
3. Focus on Short-Term Goals
Although a warehouse is built and equipped to handle projected volumes of products, it also needs to adapt to customer demands to increase efficiency. This means you should prioritize short-term goals like creating customized floor-ready merchandise for end-cap displays, hand-pricing a key customer’s merchandise at the price level or creating mixed loads to simplify customer processing when goods typically ship in full case or full pallet quantities.
4. Post Labels and Signage
Post easy-to-read location labels within the pick path and floor stack areas to keep both the operators and products organized. The labeling sequence should be intuitive and expandable in case you add more slots or storage system reconfigurations. The sequence also needs to be readable by both people and bar codes. Additionally, include aisle and dock signage to improve the flow of traffic within your warehouse. The signage should allow for linear flow from the dock to the pick area and back to the dock.
5. Use Software
Implement warehouse management system (WMS) software to sequence your orders. You can sequence them in the function of the pick path, group orders by zones, group certain orders together, or set aside the orders that include non-conveyable items. This helps you organize the workflow in a way that makes sense for your warehouse and optimizes how your orders are sequenced.
6. Track Inventory Error Rates
Monitor the pick and pack errors made in your warehouse. Keep track of the kinds of mistakes being made and their frequency. This information can provide insight into areas that may need improvement.
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