Warehouse or the place where you keep the inventory for your business is like the neck of the business. It holds up the head, which in this case is your overall direction and ensures that it is going in the right direction. Warehouse operations, though not the most glamorous or directly contributing to the bottom line, is a hygiene factor that ensures that your business operations have a good base.
Here are some reasons why improving the efficiency of warehouse processes is important:
- To avoid delays in the production of goods or the delivery of products
- To ensure that inventory levels are optimum; neither too low nor too high
- Avoid incorrect products being used for production or sent out to customers leading to quality issues
- Minimize accidents, mishaps, and misses in the warehouse leading to overall inefficiencies
Now that we have looked at the reasons to improve the efficiency of warehouse processes, let us look at how we can improve efficiency. Some of the main factors that you need to look at when deciding on how you can improve the efficiency of warehouse processes, include the following:
- Get real-time visibility into the inventory: This is the first step towards warehouse process efficiency. It is only with an overview of what is in the inventory on real-time can we work on improving the processes.
- Ability to support quality order fulfillment: One of the prime requirements of any business is to ensure that they can fulfill the orders they receive with the quality agreed upon. The warehouse has a big part to play in this by providing the right parts in case of manufacturing and shipping out quality goods to customers in both trading and manufacturing concerns.
- Better storage handling: If you talk to warehouse workers, they will tell you that the storage of the goods makes a big difference in their efficiency. Once you have the storage handled in terms of what, how much, and were, the movement of goods becomes easier.
- Transport and logistics: Transport and logistics is an integral part of warehousing because not only do they play a part in the delivery of goods to the warehouse but also the sending out of goods to various stakeholders. It is important that this part of the process is also part of the warehouse process efficiency improvement project.
What is the way forward? Today, technology has started to play a huge part in easing the problems we face. In this case, too, technology can provide you with the right answer.
What you need is a solution that will help that offers the following features:
Mobile instead of paper: Paper-based processes depend too much on, well, paper and manual efforts. When you add mobility to your warehouse processes, it makes the process real-time and convenient.
Scan and check option: Scanning and checking the inventory received and sent out is another feature that will improve the overall efficiency of warehouse processes. This is another feature that you should look for when you are working on improving the efficiency of warehouse processes.
Real-time entry on the spot: When workers are moving around the warehouse picking the items, the real-time entry on the spot is the best way to plan inventory and fulfill the requests received.
Complete inventory overview: When you are planning inventory, there is a chance that you may miss out on ordering certain items or even hold high stocks for some items. A complete inventory overview would help you optimize inventory.
Easy to implement and manage: Any solution that you seek for improving the efficiency of your warehouse processes should be easy to implement and sync with your ERP with ease.
Want to improve the overall efficiency of your warehouse processes with the right solution? Click here to get an appointment with our expert.
André Arnaud de Calavon
