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Product loss in a warehouse also translates to profit loss. The more stock you lose, the more money you’re missing out on. Therefore, it’s important that you know exactly how to treat and handle your inventory in a way that ensures its integrity throughout the entire warehousing and distribution process.
While there are things you can do to ensure that items get to the recipient unharmed, such as making sure packaging materials are adequate and of good quality, there are multiple things that you can do in the warehouse, before it even reaches the packing and sending point in the process, to protect your inventory. With this in mind, here’s how you, as a warehouse owner, can protect your warehouse from product loss:
Ensure that employees are fully-trained
It’s imperative that employees are fully-trained in the art of retrieving, loading and unloading stock in your warehouse. Whether they need to access the top shelf on the tallest piece of warehouse racking or need to transport goods from one point to another, your employees need to be properly trained to protect the stock you have.
Not only does this prevent inventory from falling and becoming damaged that way, but it also ensures that inventory is kept safe and secure when in transit. This includes ensuring that forklift operators aren’t travelling too quickly with heavy loads and also that they aren’t navigating corners and gradients too swiftly, either. As long as your operators and warehouse workers on the ground are trained properly, your inventory will be kept safe from harm indefinitely.
Have the right material handling equipment at hand
When it comes to protecting your inventory, you need to ensure you have the right material handling equipment at hand. This is especially important if your employees are looking to retrieve an item that is placed high up on the warehouse racking, for example. There are many forklifts, reach trucks and order pickers on the market that have impressive lift heights and weight capacities.
With this in mind, make sure that the equipment you have can actually reach those impressive heights. If you have order pickers, for instance, that stop short of the top shelf of your warehouse racking, then employees will risk themselves and your stock in order to gain access to it. Protect your employees and your inventory by always having the right warehouse equipment on hand to get the job done.
Make sure that warehouse racking is safe & secure
Warehouse racking is available in many different heights and widths. As such, there is warehouse shelving on the market that can span from the floor right up to the ceiling. When it comes to racking that spans that sort of height, it’s imperative that the shelving is secured properly so as to prevent it from falling or toppling over.
Not only would a fallen piece of warehouse racking cause damage to the inventory that was stored there, but it would also damage surrounding inventory and equipment. More notably, however, it could also cause harm to your employees or anyone else who is in the vicinity.
To avoid serious injury to surrounding people, and to ensure the integrity of your warehouse inventory, you need to double check that your warehouse racking is attached safely and securely to the wall before going on to stock it full of inventory.
Put rules & guidelines in place for storage of inventory
There need to be some rules and regulations in place when it comes to the storage of your inventory. Not only does this ensure that everyone knows where all of the products are, and where they can be found, but it also helps to limit manual touchpoints, which we’ll get onto in a moment, and it also makes sure that inventory is stored safely and securely. There are many different things that warehouse owners will do in order to protect their inventory, such as:
- Placing heavy items on the bottom of warehouse racking rather than the top
- Putting popular items in easy-to-reach areas
- Separating inventory items by category or nature
- Securing inventory that’s placed high up on warehouse racking
- Ensuring the warehouse racking or shelving is safe and secure to avoid toppling
- Making sure that their employees have received the right training
Reduce the need to manually handle any products
Otherwise known as ‘reducing manual touchpoints’, it’s important that you limit the amount of physical touching that your inventory undergoes. This is because, the more something is touched and moved around, the more likely it is that it will become damaged. Where you might not think that it’s a necessary step, there are plenty of reasons as to why you should be limiting manual touchpoints.
Products could become damaged by repeated handling, therefore suffering wear. Inventory could also be dropped on the floor or it could be misplaced or inaccurately packed. It also increases the likelihood of a product being stolen, as it’s no longer traceable. By having items in their place, it’s far easier to monitor in terms of its condition and it’s more simple to identify whether it’s become lost or stolen.
Multy Lift is pleased to provide high-quality material handling equipment to customers throughout the UK. We have over three decades of experience in the industry, supplying forklifts, reach trucks, order pickers, commercial cleaning equipment and more to many different industries. If you would like further information about the warehouse equipment we have available, get in touch with a member of our friendly, professional team today – we’re always happy to hear from you.
