6 Problems that Often Occur in Warehouses and How to Solve Them
When you manage inventory management in the warehouse, there must be lots of problems that often occur.
This problem can be caused by a mismatch between stock data and physical inventory in the warehouse, making warehousing management inefficient.
In addition, there are many other types of problems that must be faced by business people in managing their warehouse management.
If you don't know what problems can threaten your warehouse operations and have a fatal impact on your business, then consider the following description.
6 Problems that Often Occur in Warehouses and How to Overcome
1. Differences in Stock of Goods
The most important asset that must always be maintained in the warehouse is the stock of goods. Keeping the number of items recorded in accordance with the number of items in the warehouse is the toughest challenge in stock management.
Who said that managing inventory is an easy thing for business people to do?
This stock management can be a problem that is always faced by business people including you when taking care of warehouse management.
Often there is a difference in the amount of inventory between the recording (card stock) and the physical stock (actual) when the stock calculation is carried out, resulting in a difference in stock of goods.
Make no mistake, this one problem will have a direct impact on your business operations.
Just try to imagine if there are 15 pcs of inventory records, even though there are only 5 pcs of physical goods in the warehouse.
Surely you will be constrained to fulfill customer orders and need time to adjust the stock.
To anticipate this incident, you can check the condition of the stock in the warehouse and do it regularly.
2. Inventory Management is Still Manual
Even in modern times, there are still many business people who take care of all their warehouse management needs in a manual way.
Moreover, you often experience inventory data that is inaccurate and can be caused by human error.
For example, for example, an error in recording the inventory of physical goods is 15 pcs but what is written is that the stock is 20 pcs.
From there, it can be seen that there are errors in stock recording, where differences in initial calculations, regular stock, or an error in taking orders will affect the warehouse system management.
Getting accurate stock records is also a desire of business actors, because accurate data can make the warehousing process smoother.
It could be said that these two things are interrelated and become one of the problems that often occurs in warehouses, especially when recording manually turns out to be more time consuming.
How to make warehouse management more effective?
There are still many business people and business actors who don't know that there is now a digital system that can make it easier for them to manage their warehouses properly.
The existence of a WMS (Warehouse Management System) system will be very useful and helpful for you as a businessman, especially in the process of entering data and stock reports.
Apart from that, you can take the following actions:
- Carry out intensive training for warehouse staff. Thus, even though your business is busy serving customers, data accuracy will be maintained.
- Provide training to every staff in your company on how your warehouse system works. Thus, each worker can exchange information with each other when a problem occurs.
- Shorten the time lag between carrying out warehouse stock calculations. In general, recording errors are not the result of the item being lost or stolen, but because of the wrong placement. With frequent stock calculations, the error rate can be reduced to a minimum.
3. Lack of Warehouse Layout
Every industry has its own way of arranging the layout of goods in their warehouse. What this means is that not necessarily a warehouse layout that is suitable for a retail business can be used in a manufacturing or rental business warehouse, and vice versa.
It turns out that the layout arrangement in the warehouse is not optimal and is also a problem that often occurs in the warehouse. A messy and unorganized warehouse layout will reduce the efficiency of your warehouse operational process.
Problems with the allocation and placement of goods will generally get worse over time and the occurrence of neglect. When new items continue to grow and the availability of storage space is running low in the warehouse, the problems will pile up.
For example, you will find it difficult to find the best-selling items that are actually placed on the back shelf while the products that are not selling well are actually placed on the front shelf.
When your warehouse staff wants to pick up the best-selling product, it can take a lot of time, because the placement of the item is at the back making it difficult to reach it.
From there, it can be seen that you are not using the warehouse layout optimally.
So, to be more optimal, it's a good idea to arrange the items that are sold the most so that they are on the front shelf so that they are more easily accessible by warehouse staff.
Thus, it will not take much time to pick up the goods and delivery can be done quickly.
So that you better understand the placement of the warehouse layout, you can start by making a visual plan first.
And don't forget to categorize every item on the shelf so that it's easier for you when recording inventory.
Label storage areas and shelves, use taller shelves too.
4. The Process of Receiving and Delivery of Goods is Not Optimal
The next problem that is often experienced by business people is due to the less than optimal process of receiving and sending goods.
Usually, warehouse staff often find it difficult to record every item that enters and leaves the warehouse, and there is often a difference in stock of goods.
Therefore, the problem of the process of entering and leaving goods from the warehouse becomes the main focus so that other obstacles occur.
Generally, to solve this problem, you can apply the serial number and batch number to each item.
So, if there are goods that go out or come in, you just have to scan the barcode and record it through the system.
You will also have no trouble tracking items that are moved from one warehouse to another.
5. Ups and Downs in Demand for Goods from Customers
There are many factors that cause this problem to occur. Some time ago we witnessed the emergence of global financial problems that resulted in a decline in people's purchasing power. As a result, the inventory of goods in the warehouse was not sold and made many companies lose money.
This is indeed difficult to predict, but that does not mean it is completely unavoidable. One way to anticipate this is to calculate the correct reorder point. With this reorder point, the company's losses can be minimized and you can compensate for these losses in the future.
6. Mixed Expired Products With Other Products
Often the problem that occurs in the warehouse is that expired products are mixed with other products.
By mixing the old and new stock items, you will feel confused when checking and recording stock items.
The mixing of expired products is certainly a big obstacle, especially for those of you who sell products that have an expiration date.
Maybe you haven't optimize your warehouse management, one of which is applying the inventory method.
There are various inventory management methods but for items that have a time limit you can use the FEFO (First Expired First Out) method
To make it easier, you can choose a warehouse management system that applies the FEFO method for expired goods.
Conclusion
It turns out that warehouse management is not as easy as imagined, there are many problems faced by business people when managing their stock in the warehouse.
Because now you know what are the obstacles in managing the warehousing process, now you don't have to worry anymore to overcome all these obstacles.
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