What is a Warehouse Management System? (WMS) | Mintsoft

The bulk of this guide so far has covered the ins and outs of warehouse management and WMS, but there is more to success than simply having a sophisticated warehouse management system. To make sure your warehouse is as efficient and optimised as possible to satisfy your customer demands for speed and flexibility, there are a number of warehouse management practices to adopt.

How to gain efficiency in the warehouse

One of the best ways to reduce costs and processing time is through automation. Eliminating the need for a human to check orders, marking them as allocated, fulfilled and ready for dispatch speeds up the order processing leading to cost savings and improved customer satisfaction.

By using the automation that software such as a warehouse management system offers to speed up order processing, warehouse operators can focus on other tasks such as picking, packing and shipping orders more quickly.

The use of mobile barcode scanning is a great way of reducing the possibility of human errors from incorrect data inputs, as well as reducing costs and processing times.

By integrating your warehouse management system with your inventory system, your team will be able to easily scan goods in and out of the warehouse, updating inventory levels, prioritise packing lists, use a range of order picking techniques and perform instantaneous inventory counts using a barcode scanner.

You should also regularly review your practices to measure efficiency through reports. It is critical to monitor your warehouse’s stocking, pulling and inventory management processes by analysing the following metrics and reports on a regular basis and make decisions based on your findings:

• Variance reports
• Processing cost per order KPI
• Time to ship KPI
• Reasons for return
• Supplier reports and history by supplier
• Empty bin report
• Expense controls

Multi-Location Warehouse Management Best Practices

When operating out of multiple warehouses and store locations, it’s important to keep in mind best practices when managing a successful multi-location warehouse strategy. To make sure scale does not impact efficiency, it is important to consider and implement the following best practices:

1. Separate product counts per warehouse

Make sure your inventory management systems are displaying overall inventory levels as well as more detailed information on what is stored in each warehouse. This will prevent overstocking or running out of stock in one location.

2. Establish individual strategies for where to send products

Automate warehouse routing for regions which you are particularly present in, and store slow-moving inventory together conveniently and economically. Popular products should be stocked across all warehouses so orders can be fulfilled quickly.

3. Decide if you will use standard or concurrent warehousing

Standard warehousing means each product has a set location where it should be stored, while concurrent warehousing means inventory can be shared amongst multiple warehouses. Make sure your technology is flexible enough to accommodate both.

4. Divide inventory risk across warehouses

By operating out of multiple warehouses, you can divide your most popular or valuable items so risks are mitigated if something goes wrong.

5. Use inventory forecasting best practices

The added complexity of multiple warehouses means it’s important to be aware of the danger of overselling inventory in certain warehouses.

6. Familiarise yourself with inventory transfers

Have a documented process for employees to follow when needing to transfer goods between warehouses, from sending out from the original warehouse to receiving it in the new one.

Using technology to streamline your pick, pack, and ship process

Warehouses can greatly benefit from the proper utilisation of technology. Investing in warehouse management software can provide a variety of advantages, such as allowing pickers to print documents and labels with ease, creating picking batches tailored to your specific needs, and enabling barcode scanning to eliminate wrong item selections. With the right system in place, warehouses have the potential to streamline operations and gain a competitive edge.