Change You Can Handle: Best Practices for Inventory and Warehouse Management

Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein are two giants of history who knew a thing about getting things done right. The observation that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again with the expectation of different results” is attributed to both of them.

Does their observation characterize your inventory and warehouse operations?

If your operation is one of the tens of thousands of warehouses in the United States still using paper, Microsoft Excel, or processes first developed in the late 70s/early 80s, we’re here to help. To provide you tools, information, guidance, tips, proven methodologies, we offer you the forthcoming “Best Practice Series for Inventory and Warehouse Management.”

SmartTurn created this series for business owners, accounting staff, procurement managers responsible for inventory or warehouse operations, and anyone else who...

Best Practices: Comparing SaaS to On-Premise Warehouse Management System Software

You already knew after reading the Best Practice Series for Inventory and Warehouse Management introduction that implementing a Warehouse Management System (WMS) was inevitable.

You might have already implemented one. You might even be currently editing a WMS Request for Proposal as a first step. Or, your eyes might be closed shut, hoping that WMS vendors stop calling you, and Modern Materials Handling writers stop writing glowing WMS case studies. Sorry, you can’t ignore their ample benefits any longer. You really need a WMS to implement your industry’s best practices. But what type?

To SaaS or not to SaaS
We’re going to start our WMS conversation from the perspective of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vs. on-premise software. It is vital to understand their similarities and differences. The applications loaded on your laptop or desktop are examples of on-premise...

Inventory and Warehouse Management Best Practices: Cycle Counting

Is inventory accuracy a possibility or an oxymoron?

If you can’t find the numbers of parts, finished goods or product your inventory system says you have, you’re undoubtedly wasting time looking for them, holding excess “just in case” inventory (and thus raising your inventory carrying costs), delaying customer orders, wasting time in production and order fulfillment, or generating unnecessary return processing costs.

The main reasons for the difference between what your Warehouse Management System (WMS) system thinks is in your warehouse and what you discover is actually on-hand are unrecorded or inaccurately recorded inventory transactions. A box of inventory placed on the wrong shelf. Forty pounds of steel fittings sent to manufacturing that were actually recorded as four pounds. A size 4 skirt whose packaging is incorrectly labeled as size 6 generates a return because the...

Inventory and Warehouse Management Best Practices: Slotting for Dollars

Your warehouse is a limited resource environment. You have a finite amount of people, equipment, products and available storage space. Slotting will help you make the most of the cubic space you have.

At its most basic level, slotting is the series of tasks that precede the decision of where to put away inventory based on space available within your warehouse facility. Who benefits from better slotting? Any organization that needs to improve resource management, increase shipping performance, respond to seasonal variances in product shipping, or optimize a limited number of pick faces. Good slotting practices are a prerequisite for optimal picking. You’ll optimize space utilization and minimize the time and effort required to efficiently receive and store incoming products.


Slotting Benefits
When you optimize the storage of goods in your warehouse through...

Best Practices for RF Mobile in 3PL and Warehousing Operations

Introduction
If your role in the supply chain is to have stock immediately available to meet your customers' needs, then it is time to take a closer look at best practices for RF (radio frequency wireless).

As a distributor or 3PL, know that RF technology advances are now at the forefront of internal operational improvements in wholesale distribution. RF is a mature technology and has been implemented in thousands of facilities. There is little question, therefore, that the modern warehouse is wireless, incorporating paperless receiving, putaway, picking, shipping and inventory counting. (According to Pembroke Consulting, well over 2/3rds of industrial distributors already use wireless local area networks).

In this chapter of our Best Practices series, we're going to look at how to use RF in your operation to respond to the not uncommon scenario in which your customers demand...