Listaso Blog

8 Inventory Management Rules To Unlock Your Warehouse Potential

Inventory management is not easy; there are a lot of moving products, which depend on everything you've planned to work in the best way because errors can be crucial in having an excellent operating warehouse or not.

Carmen Canas vicepresident and cofunder of Listaso
B2B Specialist

Inventory management is not easy; there are a lot of moving products, which depend on everything you've planned to work in the best way because errors can be crucial in having an excellent operating warehouse or not.  

The next eight rules are not intended to follow step by step; you just have to consider them when planning your warehouse's logistics and operation.

 

1.Automatization

The ideal warehouse is fully automated, where your staff has 0 contacts with your products. 

But to achieve this is complicated, it is costly and very few companies can make it. An automated warehouse can have 3 to 4 points of contact between products and staff. 

The more contact points you have between your staff and the warehouse, the more mistakes can be made. To contrast this some systems automate not the warehouse but the warehouse information that allows decreasing the errors of the warehouse people (not to 100% but at least 80%) The way Listaso inventory software automatically takes information from your sales team and ERP software.

 

2.One-way flow

The planning of the direction of a warehouse is not only for products but also for vehicles that move in it.

In this way, you can plan the order in which you will pick up the products, speeding up processes that will allow you to move faster.

inventory management One-way flow

3.Stock distribution planning

There are two types of Inventory management, 

  • Triadic warehouse. Is a system that divides the warehouse into three zones:
  1. Hi product demand
  2. Medium product demand
  3. Low product demand
  • Non-triadic warehouse. Are warehouses that have NO divided into zones
inventory management Stock distribution planning

There may be a combination of these two inventory management. With the automation of processes, we can have a Non-triadic warehouse without knowing where the products are. Still, in another part of the warehouse, we can have a Triadic warehouse which is organized by the demand of the products. 

KNOWING WHERE TO PUT THE RIGHT PRODUCTS IS CRITICAL!

 

4.Stock amount

At this point, we have to get out of the warehouse, and we have to see the bigger picture. 

We need to start looking for BIG DATA: Product movement patterns, quantities, seasons, they flow warehouse to venders. We must avoid having products that have a low cost of sale but a high logistical cost. 

Big data is useful to have Inventory management that allows you to compare the data from the sales department to the inventory and analyze it. A good option is a Back-office system that controls everything from one place to generate the necessary reports.

 

5.Productive at work

Many of the companies work that if there is much work, they give a bonus to their employees for overtime.

But the employees who are most productive in their working hours are not recognized. A practice used by some warehouses is to give a bonus to the people in the warehouse management to do their jobs during working hours. 

These actions promote productivity within the company. Within the inventory software, we can measure this through the users created and see the number of movements that they have made per day.

 

6.Study your warehouse

We go back to data, we have to know and look at the transactional values, the information of what goes in and out of the warehouse, picking, packaging, and dispatch; which we're dividing up in terms of investment. 

All the information so we can design the Inventory management system. One of the biggest mistakes is to develop a warehouse based on percentages. This information has to rely on big data statistics and projections.

 

7. Take your staff into account

It is one thing to plan the warehouse; in the plans, it can be perfect, but in reality, it does not work as expected. It is crucial to take into account the warehouse staff to see that everything works as expected.

They may notice small problems in the warehouse that we did not see when we planned, and they may be able to give suggestions that they have taken to make their work more efficient.

 

8.Warehouses Management Software

As we all expect, if we do things right you will grow, have more products, more staff, and if we do not manage well from the beginning more logistical problems.

An inventory management system is a platform that allows control over your entire warehouse, movements, product controls, product locations, among other things. These systems can be expensive to implement and carry out an extensive process.

At Listaso, we are interested in helping you control your warehouse from the beginning and to help you grow in an orderly manner.

 

In short

You have to plan the warehouse based on information, data, and be able to have feedback on this information, having an inventory management software can help to control this in a better way. In which the investment can be expensive but the benefit is much more valuable.

Listen to the people who work in the winery because they can see things you haven't seen before.

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