Tips for Improving Your Warehouse Inventory Management

Does your warehouse feel like it’s not reaching its optimal efficiency and organization? Below, we offer some simple tips that managers can use to improve their warehouse inventory management, from tracking KPIs to introducing a VMI system.

Know Your Objectives

Before you start to look for areas of improvement in your warehouse and inventory management process, it’s useful to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of the business. What are the main goals of your warehouse that you want to improve? Do you want to focus on speed, cost-efficiency, organization, or all of the above?

Before you begin to adjust your warehouse, you need to understand the main goals of your business and the areas where the business is lacking.

Keep It Clean

It’s obvious but still worth mentioning that any warehouse that aims to be organized and efficient can’t do so with a messy and cluttered workspace. It’s easy for items and inventory to become scattered, and keeping a warehouse clean and clutter-free takes a lot of time and effort.

But every warehouse business must have a strict schedule of cleanings to ensure the efficiency and safety of the warehouse and workers. It’s wise to schedule monthly deep cleans for the warehouse to ensure every corner of the space is clutter-free.

Track KPIs

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are useful metrics that many warehouses use to measure staff performance and process efficiency. There are many KPIs that every warehouse should monitor to measure productivity and efficiency, including cost per order shipped and inventory error rates.

But if you’re changing the strategy of your warehouse to improve your inventory management, you should also adjust the KPIs you track. Warehouse managers may find that their delivery times are being burdened by slow receiving efficiency or that they are losing money by the high carrying cost of inventory.

Introduce a VMI

One way to instantly change your inventory management is to introduce a vendor-managed inventory (VMI) system. A VMI is an arrangement between suppliers and inventory managers where the supplier takes over managing pre-determined inventory levels.

For one, a VMI takes responsibility for re-ordering and balancing inventory levels from warehouse managers’ hands and helps cut overhead costs by removing time-consuming inventory responsibilities from management and workers. If you could use help with your inventory, consider starting a vendor-managed inventory system with a trusted supplier that offers such services.

We hope our tips prove useful in your warehouse management! If you look at the big picture and set out attainable objectives with KPI tracking to monitor these goals, we’re sure your warehouse will be more organized and efficient than ever.