If you work in a warehouse, whether you’re in charge of keeping everything running smoothly or you’re someone who’s work is to load and unload freight off of trucks, it’s vital that the warehouse you’re working in is effectively managed or organized. Otherwise, the whole space could be a mess and cause a lot of lost money and product.
To help ensure that this doesn’t happen at the warehouse you’re working in, here are three ways you can use technology for better warehouse management and organization.
Use The Same System Everywhere
If you only have one warehouse that your company is working out of, you won’t have to worry about keeping your management and organization systems consistent. But if you’re working in just one of the multiple warehouses that your company has under its control, you’re going to want to be sure that each warehouse is using the same systems for management and organization.
When the same systems aren’t being used in warehouses that work together closely, you can have a lot of issues with inventory visibility. This means that your management system, or ERP, won’t be up-to-date. This can cause problems with knowing what you have in stock, knowing what you need to order more of, fulfilling orders and requests, and getting everything shipped out in a timely manner. And since the whole world is already experiencing issues with the supply chain, you don’t want to make things any worse than they already are. So if you’re not using a consistent ERP or other management system with all your warehouses, this is something you’re going to want to change immediately.
Get Rid Of Your Oldest Items First
For most types of inventory, it’s ideal to get rid of the oldest items first. This way of cycling through your inventory is called FIFO, or first-in-first-out.
To help you keep track of this, you can use a tagging and tracking system that helps you with rotating your stock to ensure that you’re moving the oldest items out of your warehouse first.
Automate Your Supplier Network
When working in any environment, the more things you can automate, the more efficient you’ll be.
Knowing this, if you can automate aspects of your supplier network through tracking your warehouse data and automatically getting more products ordered when needed, you can make almost all aspects of working with vendors much easier. Invoices can easily be created, you can contact your vendors, and you can keep track of all of your costs simply by using a third-party service to keep track and automate all of these aspects of your business for you.
If you’re needing to take advantage of modern technology to help you better manage and organize your warehouse, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you do just this.