Inventory management is the name of the game for warehouses of any size or industry, but the actual process of getting there can take many forms.

No matter how big your warehouse may be, your process for inventory management can quickly become unwieldy. Between the number of workers in your warehouse, the amount of SKUs you need to track, and the number of tools available to help with inventory tracking, your process can quickly become large and unmanageable.

Starting to sound familiar? Here’s our three favorite methods for a more streamlined, disciplined inventory management process:

Streamlining Your Inventory Management Process

Micromanage your products before they arrive

Like the old saying goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, and this applies just as much to inventory management as it does anything else. Work with your suppliers to get a better idea of how much you’re supposed to get of a given item, and when it will arrive, before you’d normally add it into your active inventory.

By planning ahead like this, you can better plan for where these products will be stored when they arrive in your warehouse, as well as being better able to account for any discrepancies either when they arrive, or after they get shelved. Constant communication with your suppliers will be key, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.

Organize your warehouse like the goods are already there

A lot of warehouse practices, like FIFO (first-in-first-out) or just-in-time procurement, tend to take everything pretty down to the wire when it comes to the delivering and shipping of goods – and that can make managing your inventory a practice in frustration.

One way to reduce some of these headaches is to prepare for incoming items well ahead of time. Whether you’re reordering popular items or preparing for brand-new SKUs, look through your pallet racks and industrial storage solutions to prepare a space for these goods to go. Not only will this keep the items safer and easier to access, it will also save you and your team effort when it comes to finding these items a home, giving you more time to focus on the other aspects of inventory management.

Review for excess inventory

Few things can clog up a warehouse – or slow down the inventory management process –  like  . Schedule regular reviews of slower-selling SKUs to see what can be relocated or what can be clearanced out/shipped back to the original distributor, and you can avoid wasting critical inventory management time on items that aren’t selling as fast as the stuff you really should be keeping an eye on.

By checking to see which items aren’t sling as fast as they used to (or even items that seem to have too high of a quantity-on-hand in general), you can get an idea of what to prioritize when your next inventory check or warehouse layout change comes around, and may just be able to spare yourself a ton of headaches along the way.
With these steps in mind above and beyond your normal inventory management efforts, your processes may just run into fewer hassles overall.