To the typical consumers out there, the warehousing process might look very straightforward and easy to handle. But, only industry insiders know the bitter truth about maintaining warehouses because the process has always been challenging to deal with. Moreover, with newer trends in logistics popping up almost every year, the method gets a lot harder over time.
Therefore, to help you ease the pain a little bit, we are going to discuss some of the standard warehousing and distribution problems that you might face (or facing) and how you can solve those same issues as well.
The Various Warehouse Problems And The Ways To Deal With Them
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Having Inaccurate Inventory
Inaccurate records are mostly discovered when a particular warehouse worker plans to obtain any product, but the same is not there at the expected location of the said product. Such problems lead to shipment delays and even mis-picks.
This problem generally arises when there are manual sorting of items and can easily be solved by using WES or Warehouse Execution Systems – otherwise known as warehouse automation.
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Performing Activities That Are Redundant
There’s no need for having excessive and unnecessary handling of products within the same or different warehouses, without any practical reasons. These redundant activities lead to shipping delays and even customer dissatisfaction over time as well.
The only way that you can solve this problem would be to train your warehouse team and drill a simple & easy flow of communication so that there are fewer redundant activities to be performed.
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Process Of Picking Items That Is Sub-Optimal
If the product picking procedure is not done efficiently, then it can not only lead to wastage of time but also labor hours (leading to monetary loss). The goal of picking items should be to minimize the amount of movement that is to be made to accomplish the same.
Some of the best solutions would be to create optimal product picking routes along with the establishment of standardized processes. Moreover, investment in proper warehouse automation should also be carried out.
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Space Is Utilised Poorly
With the rise of e-commerce websites, space utilization has become a significant factor in the world of warehousing. If more time is spent in picking and moving items, then the main reason for the same would be a poor utilization of space inside the warehouse.
The best way of utilizing space would be to invent a new product racking system and also investing in warehouse automation systems. For example, a product that is shipped often should be kept at the front of the warehouse structure, while items that are picked seldom or occasionally should be kept at the back of the warehouse structure. Optimal warehouse planning is required to obtain such efficiency.
