Warehouse security can take many forms, each of them vital for the safety of your workers and products, as well as increasing productivity and ensuring daily operations flow smoothly.

Even after you’ve installed a series of safeguards for your workers, such as wider aisles and guard rails, you can further optimize your operations by adding physical safeguards to protect your products as well.

By optimizing the security around your inventory (and the methods with which you store it), you can prevent theft, minimize shrink from damages, and further ensure smooth operations throughout the entire warehouse. Many of these safeguards take a physical form, whether from your workers or from increases to your warehouse storage, and they can all help your warehouse in a variety of ways:

Multiple locks:

One of the easiest ways to prevent unauthorized access to your facility and/or certain products is to increase the number of locks on each door. This can both reduce theft and help prevent access to certain areas that may contain more sensitive products and/or potentially hazardous materials by workers not trained in their handling. (Remember to install locks on windows as well to further prevent unwanted visitors, both of the theft and local wildlife varieties.)

Secure areas for specific products:

Speaking of products that not every worker or staff member has been cleared to access, wire mesh security partitions are a great way to keep more sensitive products separate and secured behind a locked entryway to prevent accidental loss or misuse. Just make sure that only the workers that really need them have the keys to get in, otherwise what’s the point?

Appropriate storage for each item:

While preventing theft is key for minimizing inventory loss, reducing misplacement and breakage is equally critical to lowering your shrink counts. Consider the appropriate storage for each item and make sure it can be safely kept long-term on each storing option; for example, smaller, more potentially fragile items could work better on wire shelving or steel shelving than it could on bulkier pallet racks so they’re easier to put away and at less risk of breaking, and perishables should always be kept on plastic shelves or NSF shelving to reduce the risk of spoilage or infection.

Physical, on-hand storage counts:

Whether you’re looking to prevent theft, need to frequently review your inventory to check for broken or unusable items, or simply want to get a better (and more accurate) idea of your on-hand stock, performing physical inventory counts is a great way to get more eyes on your stock and get a better idea of what your inventory sits at. Knowing that there will be physical counts being performed (and on a regular basis) will help further deter theft, and performing these counts as frequently as your staffing levels and scheduling allows will help you get out ahead of any inventory shortages before they get worse.

Frequently checked fire alarms:

A huge contributor to product loss (as well as a major danger to your workers and facility) is the risk of fire, no matter how small (or large). By installing fire alarms in every room of your warehouse, no matter how safe from fires it may seem at first, you can make huge strides in reducing the risk of a fire and helping to contain any issues before they start. Always remember to keep up on the scheduled security checks – it might sound like a pain to have the building inspectors come in as often as they say they should, but the benefits are more than worth it.