A warehouse is a place where significant action happens. All your orders are received, packed, and shipped from the warehouse. If your warehouse or storage center is not organized, there can be a delay in processing orders that can eventually lead to a poor customer experience. This can act out poorly for your business. Hence, it is essential to organize your warehouse correctly to ensure that you can streamline your fulfillment operations and fulfill incoming orders in the most efficient manner possible.
What Does Warehouse Organization Mean?
Warehouse organization refers to the process of arranging your warehouse and aligning operations systems to ensure the smooth functioning of daily operations.
It includes organizing inventory, aligning the process, and ensuring that all the parts of the fulfillment process are working in synchronization with each other.
Organizing the warehouse is not an easy task. It involves a lot of dynamic elements that keep changing as the trends change. Since you need to take care of a large number of stocks, you must ensure that you organize the warehouse properly so that no items are left out or do not accumulate dead stock. Many sellers spend a lot of time doing trials to see what organization techniques work for them. This can be a time-consuming task.
Here are a few expert tips that can help you understand warehouse organization and do it efficiently.
Expert Tips for Warehouse Organization
Keep the Warehouse Clean
Keeping the warehouse clean is the most crucial step for an organization. All parts of your warehouse must be cleaned thoroughly before you start with any organizational activity. Cleaning can boost your efficiency by a considerable amount, and you might also be able to find a thing or two that you might have been missing. Also, a clean warehouse facilitates more effortless movement, and employees would be able to move around conveniently to get things done faster.
Organization of Floor Plan
The floor plan is the next most important aspect of your organization. An optimized floor plan helps you streamline the process flow, and you can make sure every operation is in sync and flows around easily within the warehouse. You must constantly keep overlooking the floor plan to organize the warehouse with changing trends and requirements. A pro-tip would be to set up the floor plan concerning the order of operations. There should be a set area for docking and collecting inventory that gradually leads onto the next step of quality check, followed by stocking and so on.
Classify Inventory
Classify your inventory either by the ABC inventory sorting method, alphabetical order, or any combination you feel is appropriate. But do not randomly stock your inventory as your resources and workforce will spend a reasonable amount of time just picking orders. Therefore, you need to optimize the process and reduce the order-to-ship time. In that case, you need to make sure that your inventory is classified and your warehouse is organized to host this invention systematically.
Segregate Inventory In Aisles, Racks, and Bins
The next step would be to segregate the inventory in aisles racks and bins. You can label the aisle in alphabetical order, and in these aisles, you can use shelves to organize the inventory. It is best to use stackable beans to move around if you want to change the organizational layout. Segregation into aisles racks and bins gives you more visibility of the inventory and helps you track the SKUs better.
Label Everything
Next, label everything. Use handheld printers to constantly print any barcodes or labels for the bins or racks. This will give you improved inventory visibility, and you will be able to locate the product much faster within the warehouse. Not just this, we will also be able to track inventory better. When you undertake the inventory reconciliation activities, you will complete them much faster since you have labeled all products. You will be able to locate discrepancies quicker.
Warehouse Management Systems
Using a warehouse management system can help improve the quality of operations. Since the WMS technology is advanced and automates the process for you, you can store all data in it and track your products in the warehouse with utmost efficiency. Moreover, advanced warehouse management systems also provide you with the most optimal floor plan to organize your warehouse and achieve maximum efficiency.
Use Barcoding Technology
One cannot stress enough barcoding technology as it helps you maintain sync with The records and physical inventory. You can just scan a barcode to learn more about the product or find its location. Using handheld devices to scan barcodes and pick orders is a much faster process than writing down or locating inventory manually.
Overcoming the Hassles of Self-Fulfillment
Self-fulfillment can be challenging if you do not have the most advanced technology and a team of skilled resources to help you out. It can be time-consuming and mentally draining to run an eCommerce business and also fulfill your autos yourself. Even if you are a small business and the orders are less, self-fulfillment can be a task. Therefore, we recommend that you outsource your eCommerce fulfillment operations to a 3PL fulfillment provider so that you can easily focus on other aspects of your business.
Shiprocket Fulfillment is one such 3PL fulfillment provider that can help you with an organized fulfillment center to keep track of all orders and deliver them seamlessly. You get access to fulfillment centers across the country so you can easily store inventory closest to buyers and get started with 3x faster delivery immediately. Each fulfillment center is equipped with a warehouse management system for optimized operations, and the warehouse is thoroughly organized.
Conclusion
eCommerce fulfillment can be complex if your warehouse is not organized according to your requirements and the inventory. Make sure you spare a keen eye towards the fulfillment operations so that you do not face any setbacks because of poor organization.
