Having a disorganized and messy warehouse is associated with an increase in storage costs. This is because a disorganized warehouse makes it difficult to locate goods, take inventory and even transport the goods to their destination. All these problems cause delay and therefore results in increased storage costs which will reflect negatively on your company through reduced profits or revenue. The following are five tips that you can use to ensure that you maximize on your storage space;
Use of automatic data collection and cargo handling
When goods are handled manually, a lot of confusion will be experienced in terms of where exactly the goods should be placed or sent. This will happen if your warehouse has new or inexperienced employees who are yet to be in sync with the learning curve. However, the introduction of technology has made automation possible. You can easily store data regarding the date, storage space, pick update that will ensure that minimal confusion occurs. You will be able to know where everything is supposed to be making retrieval easy.
Use of bin locators
A manual warehouse where everything is handled manually experiences a lot of difficulties when locating goods. This is due to a lack of a specific place to store the goods in the warehouse. However, you can avoid this problem through the use of bin locators. A good warehouse storage will utilize bin locators to mark all the rows, columns and racks. When you put a specific well in a specific row, column and rack, it gives you a bin number that will be recorded. This will make it easy when one wants to retrieve the good.
Track your asset
You can easily achieve this by mastering the concepts of demand and supply of the products in your warehouse. You should request suppliers to supply more goods that are in high demand and ask for fewer goods that are selling a slow rate. This will help to have stock at the warehouse that is not selling which increases storage costs. It will also allow you to utilize your space better to increase revenue.
Undertake and ABC analysis
This is a simple analysis which allows you to categorize the goods according to their monetary value. People don’t usually value their products equally allowing them to categorize their products which will rake in the most money and those that will rake in average and least amount. You can categorize the products according to A-list, B-list, and C-list. A-list carries the data regarding the most prioritized goods. These goods bring in the most revenue because they bring in the most revenue. C-list comprises of goods that low revenue while B-list comprises of goods that are of average revenue, value and reorder levels.
Make use of all the available space
Storing goods randomly in the warehouse makes it difficult to efficiently manage the warehouse since it stops you from storing more cargo than you would. Using all the available space in the warehouse is essential. This can be achieved by designing the warehouse according to the number of order and the shipments. This will enable you to know the products that are moved more than others and the number of personnel to hire thus reducing costs.
