Warehouse Operations Efficiency & Optimisation: Cost, Space, Productivity and Capacity

1. Materials Management Review 11January 2017
Evolving Role & Responsibilities of Warehouse
Operations: The days are gone when warehousing
played a role in the storage and exchange of goods.
However, the scope and core responsibilities of
warehouse operations have evolved to deliver high level
inventory management, swift receiving & shipping dock
management, accurate and flexible customized pick &
pack services, and state of the art storing and
safekeeping solutions for all the goods.
Companies are constantly trying to find ways to improve
performance of warehouse operations to gain maximum
efficiency at minimum cost.
Best practice warehouse operations enable companies
to meet the strategic delivery needs by improving
materials flow, order pick & pack, replenishment, dock
operations and maintenance of a swift information flow
from source to delivery point, thus facilitating the
coordination of the entire supply chain to get purchased
materials in the right way, to the right place, and in the
exact time they are expected by the next link in the
supply chain up to and including the final consumer.
Because of the development of an increasingly integrated
global economy market with production facilities
scattered around the globe, warehouse operations are
becoming the key factor to cope with demand variations,
and inventory management is a critical component of a
company’s financial performance, warehousing has
become a vital chain within supply chains because it
holds so much potential for improving lead time and cost
reductions.
Challenges: The biggest challenge on today’s warehouse
managers is to increase productivity and efficiency by
accuracy, reduce cost and inventory while improving
customer satisfaction, which ultimately means,
optimized inventory turns, free cash flow and efficient
use of all the resources assigned.
With so many factors to balance, considerations to weigh
in every decision, and pressure from stakeholders on all
sides to be more productive, minimize expenses, and
maintain a smooth supply chain flow, it’s no surprise that
warehouse managers play a vital role and make an
effective contribution in the growth of businesses by
outlining best practices for warehouse operations in
order to gain a competitive edge by:
Delivering low-cost and on-time service to
distribution centers, productive facilities and/or
points of consumption through improving efficiency
and productivity while reducing costs, and
improving quality and accuracy in preparation of
WAREHOUSE OPERATIONS EFFICIENCY &
OPTIMIZATION: COST, SPACE, PRODUCTIVITY &
CAPACITY
MILAN VYAS, DIRECTOR- SUPPLY CHAIN
FORMICA LAMINATES (INDIA) PVT. LTD. AHMEDABAD
milanv78@yahoo.com
orders.
Improving stock control to prevent production or
service disruptions due to lack of material, picking
disruptions due to lack of replenishment, loss of
sales opportunities, and unnecessary purchases.
Improving the information flow, traceability and
service rates.
Managing the constantly increasing complexity of
the market by improving flexibility and showing high
change-adaptability to meet the customers’
fluctuating demands due to seasonalities, rise of
new sales channels, etc...
Focus Areas: Identify and minimize Waste – All “Non-
value added” activities in warehouse operations to
improve performance and efficiency. When you know
what your customers’ needs and expectations are, you
can start to better define what the value-add activities
are. Everything else is Waste!
Whether it’s big or small, whether it handles small parts,
large items, or a mix, a well-run warehouse will have
the following characteristics:
5S
Effective Warehouse Layout & Design
Visual Management
Hazard and risk management – Safety/OSHA
Inventory management
Warehousing efficiency practices – Standard
Operating Procedures (SOP)
Effective IT enabled tools and Warehouse
Management System (WMS) Software
Transport efficiency
Continuous Improvement Approach
By seeking out and reducing as much waste as possible,
company will be benefited by:
Become more competitive in our marketplace
Increase customer satisfaction
Reduce Lead time
Safer places to work.
Common Waste Identified in Warehouse Operations:
Defects: one of the easiest wastes to identify.
Activities that cause rework, returns or adjustments,
errors, order entry / billing mistakes, inventory
discrepancies, or materials missing, damaged,

2. Materials Management Review12 January 2017
defective, wrong or mislabeled in warehouse, any
handling or transport damage or errors that make
a product or service less valuable to our customer
falls into this category.
Optimisation / Overproduction: Inefficient use of
warehouse space such as racking systems, layout,
height usage and location utilization, inefficient
work-flow planning, scheduling or communication
like stocking and delivering products before they are
needed.
Optimisation / Overproduction is considered to be the
worst of all wastes, because it has a knock on effect in
multiplying the following wastes:
Defects: Overproduction can lead to increased levels
of damage and stock loss.
Waiting: Waiting time is often increased when
producing large batch sizes.
Inventory: Overproduction results in unnecessary
raw material usage & excess inventory.
Transport: The additional finished goods need to
be moved and stored.
Motion of people – overproduction results in
unnecessary physical exertion product handling
Waiting: People, systems and material delays due
to wasteful processes. Any time not used effectively
in warehouse like waiting for picking lanes
replenishment, material or shipping approvals,
waiting for data or waiting for correct materials and
services to arrive due to poor replenishment
planning.
Transportation: Any movement of raw materials,
work in progress and finished products more often
than necessary. Inefficient transporting of product
between warehouse and the customer adds no
value to the finished product or service yet requires
resources (which cost money). Unnecessary internal
transport that results in added cost and lower
productivity such as storing fast moving inventory
in the back of the warehouse.
Inventory: Often considered to be a serious waste
as it hides (and even creates) other forms of waste
such as defects, transport and waiting. Any activity
that results in excess – or lack – of inventory or
placed in a different location where required. Poor
visibility or inaccurate information over the existing
inventory in the warehouse management systems
will impact the preparation of orders and ultimately
result in stock being unavailable for sales or
shipping, thus increasing the frozen assets in the
company.
Movement: Unnecessary movement of people, such
as walking, reaching or stretching, due to inefficient
layouts, lack of ergonomic workstations, manual
picking that involves more than just one ‘touch’ per
item to prepare the order and make it ready to be
shipped or picking trails not optimized.
Space: The use of space that is less than optimal,
such as low or excessive fill-up rates of trailers,
containers or cartons, inefficient use of warehouse
space, racking systems not aligned to the kind of
product and expected flow.
Store and Warehouse must be:
Air Free: Compact manner - no air is stored. Effective
utilization of warehouse space
Bend Free/ Climb Free: Ergonomic & Safe
Search Free: Duly identified using colour codes and
other visual management principles
Count Free by providing slots, putting them in
convenient packages
Basic Storage & Warehousing Principles:
Principle of Popularity: Frequency of usage (Popular
Demand Material)
Principle of Similarity: Similar Material to be stored
together
Material Location Audit: Fixed Location/ Random /
Dynamic Location
Optimizing Warehouse Operations Workflows: Effective
Slotting, Space & Capacity
Warehouse managers know just how critical an
optimized layout is to the overall efficiency of a
warehouse operation. The layout of warehouse and
racking plays a huge role in how quickly your staff can
pick product and stock shelves, thus impacting shipping
and receiving functions.
Warehouse Slotting determines the most appropriate
storage location for each item in your warehouse. To
understand warehouse slotting, understand: ”There is
a place for everything and everything in its place.”
Better product slotting aids warehouses in achieving
several key objectives, including:
Reductions in picking time
Reductions in travel time
Avoidance of aisle congestion
Through a careful analysis of a pick cycle, you can
determine the portion of total picking time that is spent
traveling through the facility. In some cases, travel time
can make up between 40% and 65% of total picking time,
which can often be substantially decreased with more
effective product slotting.
There are several methods warehouses may use to
optimize slotting. Now let’s look at the key areas and
tactics you can employ for effective warehouse slotting
practices and strategies that can boost productivity and
optimal efficiency.
Making the Items We Use the Most Easily Accessible:
The items in your warehouse each have their own unique
combination of characteristics. One of the most
important characteristics is the frequency of physical
touches for each specific item. “Physical touches” refers
to each time someone has to go to the location the item
is stored in to do something (pick an item for an order,
put away receipt, etc.). As physical touch activities go,
the one that gets the most attention is order picking. So

3. Materials Management Review 13January 2017
not surprisingly, most warehouse slotting is focused on
improving the efficiency of order picking. It also increases
throughput to your customer by filling their orders in a
more systematic fashion. The company’s main mission
must be to exceed the customer’s expectations. This is
one way to do that. Turn the customer’s orders around
in a timelier manner to meet their needs.
Rank All Items by Frequency of Usage: The typical
warehouse slotting project will start by ranking all items
in the warehouse based on the frequency of usage. This
is very easy to do and simply involves creating a report
based on either your sales order detail file, a transaction
history file, or a movement history file (if you have a
WMS). You will generally run this against a full year’s
transactions, and count all sales transactions for each
item, then sort the report or query by the total sales
transactions in descending order.
Have you remembered Pareto’s 80/20 Principle? Use it
As Your Warehouse Slotting Principle Guide
The first item on the report is your fastest moving item,
the second is the second fastest moving, and so on in
descending order. This means that 20% of these top
items equals 80% of the total items. You should
concentrate on this 20% and have them available for
picking upfront in your warehouse or DC. Companies
with the most efficient warehouses have the most
frequently picked items closest to the shipping areas
to minimize picking time and gain efficiency. Now
remember, we’re talking about the total number of
times an item is picked here, not the total quantity that
is picked. If we did the latter, then an item that was
picked a thousand times last year with a pick quantity of
one unit would be ranked the same as an item that was
picked one time with a pick quantity of a thousand.
Obviously, from an order-picking efficiency perspective,
we want that item that was picked a thousand times in a
more accessible slot than the one that was picked once,
even if they both represent the same unit sales.
Look at the Characteristics of Locations: First, we want
to look at the distance an order picker would need to
travel to get to the location, and how accessible the
location will be once the picker gets there. A location
that requires a ladder or lift truck to access is not as easily
accessible as one that can be directly accessed from floor
level. And even within those locations that can be
accessed from floor level, those that don’t require a
worker to bend over or reach up are more easily
accessible than those that do.
As to the distance an order picker would need to travel,
things get a little more complicated. That’s because we
need to consider exactly how orders are picked in your
operation. If a picker has a fixed starting point and moves
to a location for a single pick, then returns to that fixed
location, we can simply rank the locations by the distance
from the fixed starting point. This would often be the
case in a full pallet picking operation where a lift truck
operator can only pick one pallet at a time before
returning to the starting point or the shipping dock.
But what if a picker follows a fixed picking path through
several aisles before returning to the starting point? In
this case, each location along that fixed picking path will
be ranked the same as far as distance goes, because the
picker is going to go past each location anyway. In many
warehouses, you actually have a combination of the
previous examples, so you need to take all this into
consideration when ranking your locations.
Matching Fastest Moving Items to Best Locations, So
On and So Forth....but Look out for Appropriate Slot
Sizes: Now that we have our locations ranked and our
items ranked, we can just take our fastest moving item
and slot it in our best location, then take our second
fastest moving item and put it in our second best
location, and so on.
When you have items with greatly varying sizes you will
also likely have locations (slots) of varying sizes. So you
obviously need to make sure the items are going into
slots that are appropriately sized. An item’s size
combined with the quantity picked also needs to be
considered. In both these cases, the size of the slot is
driven by the size of the item and how much of that
item needs to be stored there. Slot size is important
when looking at order picking efficiency because larger
slots result in your order pickers needing to travel
further when moving past these slots to get to other
slots. What we really need to look at here is how many
picks we can get out of a specific amount of pick face.
If the warehouse or DC has a somewhat bulky item that
gets 500 picks per year and requires a pick face four feet
long by four feet tall, but also have five smaller items
that each get only 200 picks per year and all five items
combined will fit in the same four foot by four foot pick
face as the bulky item, we are actually better off giving
the five slower moving items a better slot than the bulky
faster moving item. That’s because our objective with
slotting is to get the most picks with the least amount
of traveling.
Consider the Characteristics of Your Slot Size, Weight,
Durability, and Material: What quantity should you
expect a slot to hold? Larger slots will stretch out your
pick paths and, therefore, result in less efficient order
picking. But smaller slots require more frequent
replenishment. Other slotting considerations would
include the weight of the items being stored or other
characteristics that may make some slots more
appropriate than others. Generally speaking, you want
to keep your heaviest items lower, but this doesn’t
necessarily mean the need to go in floor locations. You
really need to look at how you pick and stock these items.
If, for example, you are picking and stocking these heavy
items from a raised picking cart, the best slots for these
items would be levels close to the level of the cart. And
then there are more obvious characteristics, such as
hazardous items being stored in specific areas designed
for hazardous items, or cold storage items being slotted
in cold storage.
Some operations may need to consider load building
when slotting their products. This is important if you are
picking directly to your shipping pallets and need to make
sure heavy items go on the bottom, and more fragile
items go on the top.
You may also want to consider related items that are
often picked together on the same order. This takes a
bit of analysis, but can be very beneficial in some
operations. Obviously you need to consider this within

4. Materials Management Review14 January 2017
the context of your pick paths, because the benefits of
slotting these items together will vary based on your pick
paths.
Dynamic Slotting Considerations: You may run into this
term when looking at the functionality of certain
Warehouse Management Systems (WMS). Dynamic
slotting: What it means is that the WMS has the
capabilities to set up new or temporary slots for items
allocated for known shipments. If you know you are going
to have a lot of picks for a specific item today, you may
choose to create a new temporary slot right by the
picking/shipping area rather than sending the picker to
the normal slot for faster turnaround time to your
customer.
Understand the Other Affects of Warehouse Slotting:
Warehouse slotting also affects put away, daily cycle
counting for Inventory Records Accuracy and root cause
analysis, physical inventories, and overall space
efficiency. We also need to determine when to replenish
pick slots and when to re-slot based on item frequency
changes. As you start taking into account all the potential
variables, it does begin to get complicated. There may
be a need for that slotting software mentioned earlier.
The reality is, absolute optimization of slotting is simply
impractical for most operations. But that doesn’t mean
you give up and do nothing. By understanding the
variables in your specific environment, you can use your
knowledge of these variables to help you approximate
their impact on groups of products and locations. If a
variable doesn’t make a significant difference in your
specific operation, don’t waste your time trying to
incorporate it. If a variable is important but is way too
complicated to calculate on an item-by-item basis, try
to put together some guidelines that help to take this
variable into account. And try not to get too
overwhelmed by the complexity of all these calculations.
Use the KISS method and “keep it simple and stupid”.
You don’t have to have the perfect warehouse slotting
plan. Even a very simple ranking of items purely by times-
picked and then slotting them without taking into
account any other variables will prove to be a significant
improvement over no warehouse slotting.
Make Smart Use of Floor Space: “Matt Grierson is
managing director at Dexion, which provides industrial
and commercial storage solutions across Europe. He says
that only a small fraction of the companies that approach
him believing they need to move into larger premises
really do need to. The rest have enough space already,
they’re just using it badly.
Grierson says: ‘Inefficiency just happens. You start with
a big empty shell that’s high and deep and you slowly
begin to fill it as your company grows. Most of the
company’s efforts are concentrated on generating sales,
naturally, and the warehouse gets forgotten. Before long,
your warehouse is full, but it’s wasted space and you’ve
got a lot of unused potential.’
“By using your space efficiently, your staff can get jobs
done quicker and can complete more jobs in a day, you
save on purchase or rent by not expanding unnecessarily,
and you can go longer before the huge burden of
relocating into bigger premises.”
Grierson adds: ‘There are a lot of shelving options. Two-
tier or mezzanine, fixed or mobile. If you can squeeze
your rows of shelving together, and only open them up
when access is required, you can save 50% of your floor
space.’”
Design Storage Systems to Meet the Needs of the
Current and Planned Mix of Storage Types: Regardless
of the ultimate mission of the warehouse, best-practice
companies have designed storage systems to meet the
needs of the current and planned mix of storage types.
They have optimized storage locations and layouts to fit
product without the need to restack or repalletize it once
received. The warehouse management system will track
storage location profiles and properly assign product to
the best storage location. As a result, best-practice
companies have excellent cube-fill rates.
Optimizing Inventory Management:
Perform Cycle Counts and Analyze Discrepancies: You
should work to create a culture of inventory control
through a cycle counting process. Do it every day before
orders start shipping. This sounds difficult, but accuracy,
efficiency, and morale increases will be tangible. And it’s
easier than it sounds.
SKU Profiling can facilitate Profitability: Understanding
how every SKU carried in your distribution center (DC)
can and should contribute to your company’s bottom
line – is the best way to design and run DC operations.
Each SKU has a potential cost impact that goes well
beyond its actual purchase price. The decisions
surrounding whether a SKU should be stocked and
where, and in what status it is to be held in the supply
chain, impact the profitability of your company. And from
a selfish standpoint, these same decisions, made without
sufficient evaluation, can rob your distribution center
of capacity and efficiency.
Don’t treat all SKUs the same – “Each and every product
does not have the same supply and demand variability
pattern. Focus on those 20% that statistically make up
80% of the volume and manage that inventory really
well, so you maximize sales and profits.”
Check Safety Stock levels regularly: Warehouse manager
must ensure a balance between supply and demand by
establishing minimum holding stocks to cover lead-times.
To achieve this, the manager must constantly liaise with
the programs to keep abreast of changing needs and
priorities. The warehouse must always have sufficient
stocks to cover the lead-time for replacement stocks to
avoid stock-outs.
Reduce Lead Times: A reduction in lead time will lead to
products / materials not being held in stock for a long
time. Both a reduction in supplier lead time and
manufacturing lead time will contribute to inventory
reduction. To reduce lead time the throughput, WIP and
cycle time will need to be measured in order to get a
realistic estimation of a reduction in lead time. This in
turn will reduce the risks related to holding inventory
for longer periods of time.
Maintain Constant, Consistent Communication with
Vendors. : Having an improved relationship with
suppliers is highly beneficial not only to the whole supply
chain but also with inventory reduction. Having a rapport
with the supplier will mean that communication

5. Materials Management Review 15January 2017
between the parties is effective. The suppliers have the
best knowledge of product they produce this can be
utilised with a good rapport as this information can be
shared. By having a good relationship with the suppliers
communicating will be easier.
Achieve Inventory Analysis Efficiency: With solid
inventory analysis, you can ensure that you are investing
in the right amount of the right products to remain
competitive. By developing and using a comprehensive
set of tools to closely monitor the performance of your
inventory, you can achieve more of your goals more
efficiently.
Using Pareto ABC analysis will help determine which
inventory is used most often.
More Accurate Forecasting and Pull based Demand
System: Having a robust Sales & Operations Planning
(S&OP) process and standardized reliable way of
forecasting demand will mean that excess stock is not
order and will reduce the chance of obsolete stock.
Having a more streamlined supply chain with information
being passed along and shared can also increase the
chance of a better forecast as more information is
available.
A way for inventory reduction is by having a pull based
demand system, this will reduce the risk of obsolete stock
as all the materials ordered are being used to make the
product.
Liquidate Obsolete Stock: By identifying, and liquidating
obsolete inventory; the volume of inventory on hand will
decrease. With this both direct and indirect costs of
keeping the obsolete inventory will be reduced. This
closely links to reduced order sizes as a smaller volume
of the inventory will be in stock and as a result fewer
inventories will be in stock to become obsolete.
Understand the Warning Signals: The easiest way to
identify that you have too much or the wrong inventory
is the amount of dust settled on the product in storage.
If you see more than ½ inch of dust, then that’s likely a
sign of obsolete inventory. However, there are other,
more specific indicators that inventory management
issues need to be addressed.
If there are significant discrepancies between the book
inventory and physical inventory, this is a direct indicator
that there is a problem with inventory management.
Another distinct indicator is when your warehouse staff
is having trouble locating inventory on a timely basis -
an issue that’s particularly critical when FIFO, batch/lot
number or serial number controls are involved.
The issue of locating specific inventory is typically tied
to inventory discrepancies. And, of course, if you’ve seen
a trend in the increased use of outside storage space,
then this can indicate another ongoing inventory
management issue.
Safety and Risk Management in Warehouse Operations:
There is more to warehouse safety than compliance with
fire codes and OSHA regulations.
Potential hazards for workers in warehousing:
Unsafe use of forklifts
Improper stacking of products
Failure to use proper personal protective equipment
Failure to follow proper lockout / tagout procedures
Inadequate fire safety provisions
Repetitive motion injuries.
Best Practicesfor Warehouse Safety – Make Warehouse
Safety a Top Priority:
General Housekeeping: Implement 5S – Sort, Set, Shine,
Standardise and Sustain to make warehouse safer,
productive and profitable.
Prevention of incidents and accidents begins with good
housekeeping, which is essential to a safe warehouse.
This means heeding common sense; keep docks and
floors free of boxes, garbage, boxes, baling materials,
debris, dirt, and oil. Don’t block extinguishers, sprinklers,
or fire exits. Don’t leave box cutter or sharp tools lying
around. Create designated areas to store empty pallets
and limit the stack height to six feet
Falls and Other Preventable Mishaps: Warehouse safety
is designed to prevent death as well as far more common
accidents and non-lethal injuries. Many of these
accidents could have been prevented by - Block access
to exposed or open loading dock doors, Enforce speed
limits for forklifts and lift trucks etc.
Material Handling Safety: Manual Lifting, Fork lift and
Equipment : Back injuries may occur from improper
manual lifting or overexertion.
Although forklifts and material handling equipment like
pallet jacks and drum trucks make moving heavy items
much easier, they can become very dangerous when
used improperly. The first requirement is to provide
training on all automated or mechanical lift equipment.
Employees who will be using forklifts should be both
trained and licensed by the appropriate authority.
Fire Safety, Fire Codes and Inspection: The difference
between a small fire and a catastrophic fire can often be
attributed to how much safety expertise was invested in
the warehouse design and later in its daily operation.
Chemical Safety: Chemicals in the warehouse, whether
as part of operations or inventory, can also create
important safety risks. Using or storing them contrary
to the manufacturer’s recommendations and fire codes
can lead to serious personal injury or fire risk. Make sure
you have material safety data sheets available for all
chemicals used and stored on site.
Training & Education and Safety Audits: Employees and
management training are critical and should be
mandatory. Training should also be more than just one
or two days when employees are trainees; continue it
throughout employment. Everyone with cause to work
in the warehouse (from drivers and pickers to managers
and supervisors) should be trained.
Educate senior management about occupational safety
and health so they will understand how it helps achieve
business objectives.
Improving Warehouse Information Technology:
Paperless & Wireless Warehouse
Time to Gather Real-time Operations Intelligence on

6. Materials Management Review16 January 2017
Warehousing Processes: Ever-changing customer
demands dictate the flexibility requirements of existing
facilities. To support continual warehouse process
improvement, and ensure business goals are being met,
gather and analyze real-time data from order fulfillment
technology and materials handling equipment.
Benchmarking performance and analyzing collected data
can facilitate more informed decisions about how to
respond to changing customer requirements and
business goals. While it is possible to address errors,
expense, and decreased efficiency in other ways, RF
automation could be the right solution for you.
Productivity improvements materialize from substituting
technology for potentially error-prone human activities
such as order processing, inventory control, or picking.
Data can move directly from the warehouse floor into
your business system rather than by manually counting
and recording and entering information into the system.
Information from hand-held wireless scanners provides
real-time stock information and can even eliminate the
need for manual inventory counting.
To make data continually available to employees
whenever it is needed reduces lapses in productivity and
virtually eliminates wasteful trips to a stationary
terminal, docking station or dispatch location to grab
pick or putaway instructions. If two pickers can do the
previous work of three pickers, then your picking
productivity has just jumped 50%. If this means that your
picking accuracy increases from 95% to over 99%, your
customers will be happier.
The benefits of happier customers and avoiding the costs
of correcting mistakes will appear on the bottom line.
Modern Wireless Warehouse Systems: Modern
Warehouse is Wireless incorporating paperless Receiving,
Put-away, Picking, Shipping and Inventory Counting.
Starts with Barcode
Warehouse Management Software - On-Premises
Software or SaaS (Software-as-a- Service)
A network of paperless devices (RF Terminals, Bar
code scanners, Light directed systems and Voice
head-sets)
Warehouse Control System (WCS) integrated in to
the Warehouse Management System (WMS)
Benefits of Wireless Warehouse Systems: RF wireless
systems are increasingly common because the
advantages generally far outweigh the initial costs. As
companies become more experienced and adept using
the technology, these increases in productivity, inventory
accuracy and order visibility progressively reduce overall
costs every year.
Greater Efficiency and Throughput: With a
streamlined paperless wireless system, you should
also be able to track barcoded products from
receiving, put-away, and picking, to packing,
shipment confirmation, and cycle counting. These
greater efficiencies should allow you to handle more
orders during peak periods.
Increased Storage Capacity/Greater Flexibility in
Inventory Allocation: Put-away can become based
on the specific space requirements for each product,
something that will boost your space utilization and
increase the percentage of your potential storage
capacity.
Lower Head Counts (Permanent and Seasonal): By
employing automated data capture, you can
immediately reduce the number of employees who
were previously doing redundant manual data entry.
You should also be able to reduce seasonal or
temporary labor costs by providing novice pickers
with more accurate and intelligent routing/pick lists
that will greatly increase productivity.
Greater Data Entry and Accuracy: Barcode scanners
liberate users from the limitations and errors of hand
recording which requires printed reports and
unnecessary data re-entry. With multiple processes
available within a single application, the user is able
to accurately complete tasks in a timely fashion.
Effective Inventory Management: Inventory data
integrated with accounting and invoicing systems,
along with sales order processing and purchase
order processing so that inventory levels and data
update automatically.
Barcoding systems enhance the processing and ordering
process and speed up the inventory management
process by tracking Inventory effectively. The ability to
conduct audits more quickly and efficiently which
resulted in reduction of inventory write-offs.
Faster Error Correction: Depending on your
Warehouse Management System (WMS),
warehouse staff can obtain real-time feedback,
which enables problems to be confirmed and
investigated quickly. For instance, if too much
product arrives from a supplier, exceeding the
purchase order, the system can alert the buyer or
receiver that it is invalid. The extra cartons can be
immediately set aside or refused.
Reduced Travel Time by Warehouse Personnel:
Wireless can help reduce travel time for warehouse
personnel by enabling companies to distribute work
to individual employees by zones.
Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPI): Dr. W.
Edwards Deming is often misquoted with the maxim that
what can’t be measured can’t be improved. He
acknowledges that you can’t measure everything of
importance, but you must still manage those important
things. Therefore measure results, and implement
changes to improve your business performance.
Conclusion: Can you possibly be efficient and accurate
without best practices? Can you be efficient without
implementing an inventory and warehouse management
solution that empowers companies to beat the
competition, survive an economic downturn, increase
performance, collaborate effectively, and provide
thought leadership in the workplace? Why even bother
debating the possible answers? The risk-reward scales
are clearly in favor of “intelligent” change.
Be assured that when you decide to implement a series
of best practices, it will be a life- changing event for you
and those around you. Your successes will be newly
measurable by greater efficiencies, more accurate
shipments and satisfied customers, improved
collaboration and morale, decreased labor, and a quicker
return on investment.