Your business warehouse may not be the most attractive space but it should be as functional as possible. For your business to run smoothly, you need to know exactly what you have, where it is and be able to access everything easily.
The more organized your storage spaces are, the easier it will be to run your business from restocking the shop floor to tracking inventory and ordering new stock.
Here’s what you should do.
Choose the Right Storage Solution
To store your stock safely and securely, you need to have the right storage solutions. This could be as simple as metal shelving in your stockroom or it could be more scalable like a pallet rack system. However, do factor in a few key considerations before you decide which is best: accessibility, efficiency and safety.
In a warehouse, a pallet rack system works well because it makes your stock accessible for a forklift but it’s not so good in a stockroom because it’s a lot to move before you can get to the one or two items you need.
It’s important that your storage solution is safe and strong enough to hold all your stock without any risk to anyone entering your warehouse or stockroom or potentially damaging your stock. So, if you have food items that need to be kept cool, you should have enough refrigerated storage to do so.
Arrange Your Stock Smartly
When you are organizing your stockroom and warehouse, you need to know where everything is while also fitting as much in as safely as possible. This is the kind of challenge that anyone who enjoys Tetris is going to really love!
Making the most of vertical space is the best way to cram more into your stockroom, just remember to put the lightest things at the top and the heaviest and bulkiest things at the bottom. You should also think about replicating the layout of your shop floor as closely as possible, putting things that appear together there, together in your stockroom. This will make finding things much easier for your staff.
Use Inventory Management Techniques
Inventory management is essential for all businesses but is particularly important if you are dealing with perishables. Having a first-in, first-out policy, for example, only works if you regularly go through your stock and prioritize selling the stock closest to its expiry date.
Using an app or software to help track your incoming and outgoing stock will also help you work out when you need to order more stock and which products are the most successful. However, you should also do spot checks and audits to check that your systems are as accurate as possible. This often highlights when an item has been misplaced or stolen and will help you to manage your inventory as closely as possible.
Managing your stock smartly is all about understanding what you need and then creating a system to satisfy those conditions. You will certainly want to refine your system over the years but putting an imperfect system in place now is better than leaving it until you have figured out the perfect system later.
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