Organizing a warehouse can be a tremendous undertaking, follow these simple tips to whip your warehouse into shape.
1. Re-evaluate Your Warehouse Layout
Your warehouse layout should facilitate a smooth flow for receiving, storing, pulling, and packing your assets. When planning your layout make sure to keep the high-volume rental items somewhere that is easily accessible.
2. Maximize Available Space
Space is at a premium in a warehouse so your ability to maximize what you have is very important. If you haven’t yet, consider going vertical. Go as high as your forklift can reach with your pallet racking and if you still have space, creating a mezzanine can add lots of extra square footage. Just be mindful about the asset you keep up there and how you plan to get them down. Another option is you have the room is to add storage outside such as shipping containers.
3. Ditch Dead Assets
Dead assets are products that have not seen any sales in the past 12 months. At the end of the season run a report to see which assets have not rented in the last year and then assess whether it makes sense to keep them or get rid of them. Keep in mind that dead assets are just dust collectors and if you want to keep your warehouse running efficiently these items should be removed or relocated to a less high traffic area.
4. Keep it Clean
Your staff should build time into their schedule at the end of every day to clean up the warehouse from the day’s activities. This might seem basic and often times may get skipped but it is important to maintain a clean as you go mentality otherwise you will end up paying your staff to come in at the end of the season for several days to just clean up the messes they have made.
5. Adopt Technology
Optimize your warehouse by incorporating technology such as an inventory asset management system with RFID tags. This is a no brainer, by adding RFID tags to your assets you now have the ability to locate items in seconds, track where your assets are and cut down you inventory time from days to minutes.
Give yourself a competitive edge over the competition by keeping your warehouse in tip top shape.