Managing a warehouse inventory is mainly about effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness is you doing things the right way safely and accurately. Efficiency is you doing it properly regarding time and cost — being cost-effective. By understanding the tips for warehouse inventory management, you can achieve both.

With effective strategies for warehouse management, you can enhance your warehouse inventory management levels. In doing so, it’s possible to boost your bottom-line savings to about 50%. Ultimately, such a level of savings is a difference-maker for any business.

Generally, most people consider warehouse inventory as a way to arrange warehouse items accordingly. Probably, to make record-keeping and searching easy or to know where to find an item at a particular time. However, great inventory management covers more than that. 

A standard warehouse system is not just about putting everything in order. It’s about optimizing your productivity while saving money and time to raise inventory accuracy. Although it seems natural to overlook, organizing your warehouse inventory will benefit you in several ways.

Below are a few tips for warehouse inventory management and easy ways for organizing warehouse inventory:

Optimize Your Warehouse Structure

Generally, your warehouse design has a significant impact on inventory management. Firstly, you must understand how to allocate the right amount of space to essential activities. Secondly, you must ensure the layout design suits your operational workflow and products. These 2 steps are critical determining factors for effective warehouse inventory management.

Ultimately, if you fail to designate enough space to accommodate goods, you may experience errors in the margin. This often occurs when you’re receiving new inventory. The insufficient space can cause trouble when your employees try to account for stock. In such cases, deliveries may be recorded incorrectly or mixed up.

To increase space in your inventory warehouse, begin by allocating the path for picking movement and stock storage. For effective warehouse management, a helpful tip is to consider activities, like outputs and inputs. Also, use the sequence within the inventory warehouse, and their space requirements. 

This will help you create an efficient inventory stock flow. Remember, the goal is to have a perfect stock flow from receiving to picking and finally assembling orders.

Furthermore, arrange your inventory by product velocity instead of the usual category-based arrangement. You can achieve this by simply selecting a clear, readily identifiable labelling, and limiting passageway widths.

Provide Adequate Training For Your Employees

No one is perfect. Hence human errors are inevitable. This is one of the prevalent causes of problems in most warehouse inventory management systems. One of the primary tips for effective warehouse inventory management is to eradicate this error. You can achieve this by providing adequate training or quarterly seminars for your employees.

Focus more on recognizing the most effective and efficient ways of operating in your warehouse environment. Then, you can base your training on these best practices for warehouse management. This way, your employees will be able to stay active and productive.

Ensure to develop a standard training curriculum and organizational culture that highlights the significance of working effectively. Also, by following procedures accurately, and taking personal responsibility, your employees will get to execute their duties promptly. 

Establishing clear expectations from the onset will help your workers understand their job descriptions and expectations clearly.

Always Label Your Items

One of the best tips for warehouse inventory management is product labelling. As subtle as it seems, labelling your inventory will make it easy to carry out monthly stock checks. If you have items anywhere in your warehouse, attach a unique label on it. 

Generally, the standard practice is to label goods on arrival before moving them to your inventory warehouse. Usually, labels should include the Universal Product Code, Serial Number, or Stock-Keeping Unit number. Applying a clear label to your products will make identifying it, picking it, moving it, and shipping it more convenient for workers.

Furthermore, you can produce labels with unique barcodes using thermal printers. This makes for easy identification and classification. Using a barcode will not only improve identification. Additionally, it will allow you to capture data for asset movements. 

You can do this with an inventory management system. This will help monitor stocks from different warehouse locations if you have more than one.

Utilize Information Technology

Another effective tip for warehouse inventory management is to make use of technology. Several available tools can support your warehouse inventory management. Furthermore, most of these tools are continuously improving to serve you better.

Whether you’re a multinational company, a growing business or a small one, there are several software tools that can help. Inventory management software is a significant technology that can help optimize your business swiftly for any warehouse. 

Also, having standard software will make it easy to record every item entering your warehouse. This way, you’ll be able to better manage stock locations and movements within warehouses.

Utilize Data to Lessen Inventory

The last on our list of tips for warehouse inventory management is data usage. Firstly, you can begin your inventory management with a thorough knowledge of obsolete stock, replenishment stock, and safety stock. 

Examine your actual sales and plan fulfilment to evaluate forecast accuracy, service level, average lead times for each SKU. This will help you know the maximum safety-stock levels.