When it comes to advancement within your company, your warehouse plays a key role. Implementing a good strategy will heavily affect the success of your business. If you’re not sure where to start, the experts at Monarch have put together some tips to bringing your warehouse strategy into practice.

What is your current process?

Have a look and take note of the responsibilities of your staff and each sections own processes, including all equipment used. This helps you to see exactly what is happening in each area of the floor of your warehouse. Doing so can often bring attention to the areas that aren’t working as well as you would like and help you to think of ways to improve that section.

Get talking with your staff and spend time with all employees. This will provide you with a clearer insight of what processes and operations are being followed and how they affect the productivity of the staff. As a bonus, your employees will receive a sense of appreciation and value for you giving them your time to interact with them.

By following these actions in line with creating a drawing of your warehouse building to scale, you will get a better idea of how to create your strategy as you will then be made aware of any necessary changes to be implemented.

Your Inventory Requirements

Now you have established what is happening in your warehouse, you are able to assess your inventory requirements. In order to do this, you will have to plan and predict the amount of stock that will be coming in and figure out where this stock will need to be stored as well as its movements.

When it comes to your inventory, you need to be careful when considering estimation, and it is important to think about what is seasonal and what are the highest sellers. Take a look at previous information that has been gathered over time to ensure your estimates are as accurate as possible and  have these items organised in a way that is based on their material handling and storage traits. Each business will have different requirements based on what products are sold.

Where are your Warehouse Weaknesses?

There is no such thing as a perfect warehouse, there is always room for improvement. It may be that your scanning systems need updating, or perhaps you could change the infrastructure of storing certain products. It’s important to have a thorough look at your current facility and equipment situation to determine efficient approaches of improvement.

Look for Suitable Alternative Solutions

Only you are able to spot what is and isn’t working well within your warehouse environment, so if something isn’t going as well as planned then it’s time to look into alternative solutions for improvement. It could be that the facility in the warehouse needs improvement or staff processes need to be adapted. In order to run a successful warehouse you will have to look into alternative solutions to fix any issues.

Planning

When putting new plans into place it is important to assess and consider the following:

Financial planning:

• Operation costs
• Time value of money
• Tax

When conducting a qualitative analysis look at:

• Adjusting to changes
• Managing the new plan
• Damage to Inventory
• Staff safety
• Update your Plan

After all this, you should be ready to get your final strategy in place.

This should include the following:

• Space
• Staff
• Equipment and Processes
• Future Plans

Remember to keep your warehouse updated on a regular basis to keep efficiency to a maximum.

If you’re looking to get the most out of your warehouse space and would like to view  a variety of new and high quality, second hand racking, get in touch with Monarch today to discuss what we can do for your business. Or, why not take a look at what we can offer you by heading over to our products page?