One of the most important, yet least-discussed matters of warehouse management, is making sure you have enough space for everything.

While a big part of that is making sure you have enough warehouse shelving for everything, that’s just half the battle – the other half is using that space correctly.

By measuring your boxes and shipments, both incoming and outgoing, you can get a better idea of how much space you need to allocate to any given shipment or product, and use the available room on your shelves much better than you could before. This can also help with outgoing shipments, as you’ll know exactly how big a given box is and how many of them you can fit into outgoing shipments.

Of course, in order to make sure these boxes are measured as accurately as possible, you’ll need the right space and equipment. Many warehouses have turned to creating box-measuring stations – specific areas where every product package and outgoing shipment can be measured properly.

Create a Box-Measuring Station For Your Warehouse

The ideal box-measuring station isn’t hard to create. The most important thing to focus on is trying to anticipate the needs of your shipping/packaging staff, as they will most likely be the ones using it most often. Try to outfit your box-measuring station with the sort of tools that can make your team’s job easier, such as:

• A dedicated workbench in a specific area near the shipping/receiving area
• A variety of measuring tools and industrial hand tools – tape measures won’t always cut it given the shape and size of various boxes these days, so providing things like straight-edges and trim wood with measurements can help measure boxes of any size
• Packing supplies to help them reshape the shipments and boxes as needed to help maximize truckloads

Once the workstation is created, the next step is to normalize your measuring procedure. Create tips for measuring/packaging fragile items, checking weight, and creating a consistent series of steps for measuring and checking the dimensions of every package in the same order, the same way, every time.

Finally, you’ll need to integrate this new box-measuring station with the rest of the warehouse. Try to find a location that puts them closer to the shipping/receiving area for ease of access to products, while still allowing your team to get back to the pallet racks if they need to.

By putting a little thought and imagination into the design of your box-measuring station, you can make your outgoing shipments that much more efficient, and keep your warehouse working better than ever before.