6 Warehousing Mistakes to Avoid
As your business grows there will be increased pressure to handle the warehousing and distribution needs of your company. As you look to manage this demand, it is important that you still deliver the same level of service to your customers. When it comes to your warehousing needs, it is vital that you avoid some of the more common mistakes that many fall prey to. Read on to learn more about them.
1. Inaccurate inventory records
If you are going to have an efficient warehouse you need to make sure that you have accurate inventory records and crucially access to those records. If the records are disorganized and hard to manage then there will be inevitable problems down the line. It is very important that these records be easy to use by all employees and that they are updated in real time. This may involve the adoption of a digital-based system as paper-based documents are unreliable and hard to access quickly.
2. Picking paths not being optimized
You may think that you already have this figured out. When it comes to picking paths in your warehouse you may find that with a few small tweaks you could save yourself, and your team a great deal of time and energy. Making sure that your warehouse workers are able to do their jobs as efficiently as possible will bring huge rewards. You will be able to enjoy the benefits of faster product recovery and deliver to customers.
3. Doing it all on your own
Outsourcing the needs of your material handling can save you a great deal of time an money. There is also a great deal of other advantages to doing this. You will be able to scale your warehousing needs based on seasonal fluctuations and keep your costs down in quieter times of the year.
4. Using a paper-based process
These may have been the best way to keep track of inventory and all of your other warehousing operations in the past, but technology has moved on and you should take advantage of the tools that are available. With mobile devices and tablets now being able to access and update inventory in real time, you will be able to speed up the day to day operations of your warehouse overnight. Many of these automated systems are intuitive and very easy to adopt. You will also be able to have visibility of what is happening in your warehouse remotely too.
5. Not planning for the future
All businesses need to think long-term about how they will grow and change over time to meet the needs of their customers. There needs to be a plan in place to ensure that your competition does not creep up on you and gradually erode your market share. When you are managing your own warehouse this can take up a lot of your time. By outsourcing your warehousing needs, you will be able to direct your attention to other parts of the business.
6. Not training your team
This is one of the greatest challenges facing employers today. Making sure that your team is fully trained and up to speed with all of your processes is very important. If mistakes are made then this can cause a great many problems when it comes to order fulfilment. You also need to make sure that you do everything you can to hold onto your team members as the time it takes to train new staff can cause a decrease in warehouse efficiency. This is another benefit to outsourcing your material handling needs as you won’t need to worry about the onboarding and management of the team.
