Effective operations use best practices within the four walls of the facility and beyond. Every warehouse and distribution center should have a best practices program. These programs enable companies to reduce errors, labor, and cycle time while increasing accuracy and service. However, it’s important to note that what’s right for one company or facility, may not be right for another company or facility. A number of best practices do apply to many warehouses though, and here a few important ones:

1. Organize With Care – By dividing your warehouse into zones based on the pick type, you can simply order picking and reslotting because items with similar storage and picking methods are in one area.
2. Have Real Data – Invest in a Warehouse Management System in order to track and control the movement, storage, and transactions of anything within the warehouse. Being able to direct and optimize stock putaway based on real-time data is key at boosting your efficiency.
3. Design & Plan In Advance – It is important to design and plan your processes early as it’ll help increase the capacity and efficiency of your operations by removing any bottleneck caused by confusion.
4. Hire an Inventory Manager – You may need an additional decision maker if you operate on a large scale. You may possibly increase efficiency by alleviating your supervisors, customer service, or warehouse managers from the responsibility of managing the inventory.
5. Train, Train, and Train Until You Can’t Train Anymore – It’s important to break bad habits and instill good ones. The best way to do that is through more training. Reinforcing the basics to your veterans allows you to make sure your labor is up-to-date on the process and procedures that are industry standard today, and it will keep accidents down as safety training is known to reduce any incidents.
6. Minimize As Much As Possible – While it’s important to have an organized structure, by removing intermediate steps that are there as a buffer, you increase the speed of your process. With a faster process that’s more streamlined, customer relations  and bottom lines both improve. Looking at ways to eliminate steps and optimize your warehouse system is a very important step to cutting costs and increasing efficiency.

By implementing these 6 practices you can help drive efficiency, however it is important to note there is no ‘complete list.’ It’s important for your to do your own research and find out what works best for your warehouse and process. Every industry has its own specific needs, and luckily for your Shelving.com offers an array of products that can fulfill any of those needs.