4 Essential Warehouse Business Strategies

When it comes to warehouse businesses, the two main goals are to provide the best value to customers and to move products through the warehouse and into the hands of customers as quickly as possible. If you haven’t implemented the four following key ways to achieve those goals, it’s time to restrategize.

Consolidate Operations
For decades, the trend was to decentralize by setting up smaller regional warehouses closer to local markets. Now, many companies are discovering the advantages of consolidating their warehouses into a single facility. Doing so lowers the cost of operations by decreasing the number of facilities to run, as well as the amount of inventory to carry. When doing so, think carefully about which site has the most land, labor, and transportation-cost advantage.

Use Management Systems
The right warehouse management system (WMS) software is the bridge that connects the production, scheduling, shipping, and fulfillment departments. Having a WMS as an execution system for things like labor, equipment, tasks, and material flow will make inventory move more efficiently and can minimize downtime by automatically alerting management and employees of necessary tasks.

Redesign and Reorganize
Explore new layouts for your warehouse that optimize efficiency and flexibility. The focus should be on product flow through the space that also allows for changes based on customer demands. Use a “team-build” approach to understand what each department needs to perform, and redesign your layout as necessary. Then you can focus on speeding up product flow along the supply chain. Capitalize on every opportunity to streamline by considering slotting logic, cross docking, and packing inventory sizes. Also create a system that allows you to retrieve multiple orders at once.

To reduce costs and better meet customer demands, outsourcing is an attractive low-cost alternative for many warehouses. When choosing a third-party, consider the advantages of public rentals. They may give you the opportunity to converge services with other businesses and share solutions, and they may also have added value if they provide transportation services. But these aren’t universal practices by all third-party providers, so consider your options carefully.

If you operate with a mindset that prioritizes speed, efficiency, and value in ways that are safe and cost-efficient, you’re doing all you can to ensure your warehouse business thrives.