Warehouse Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and Example
In daily warehouse operational activities, of course, it is expected to refer to a clear and executable Warehouse Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to be carried out by employees in the warehouse.
Sometimes in the preparation of the Warehouse Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), the Quality Management / Assurance department only becomes a kind of initiator for making SOPs, without understanding whether the SOP can be implemented or not.
What is Warehouse Standard Operating Procedure?
A warehouse standard operating procedure (SOP) is a set of instructions for a specific task that has been tested and approved. It can be used as a guideline for employees to follow when performing their duties in the warehouse.
An example of an SOP would be one that outlines how to pick items from shelves, check them against packing slips, and place them into boxes.
Why You Need a SOP?
While it's important to remember that the goal of a standard operating procedure is to standardize procedures, it's equally important to remember why you want to do this. A SOP can help reduce errors, waste and costs; improve efficiency; improve quality; improve safety; improve morale and customer service.
What are the Basic of Warehouse Procedures?
Warehouse procedures are the rules, guidelines and best practices that a warehouse organization should follow in order to achieve consistent results. The correct warehouse procedure can help you solve operational problems, improve workplace efficiency and reduce costs. If you want your warehouse operation to run efficiently and effectively, it's important that you understand what these procedures are.
Basic Warehouse Procedures Defined:
Inventory control – Maintaining inventory levels by monitoring the amount of goods purchased from suppliers or manufactured within your own facility.
This process also involves making sure more than enough stock is held for sale so customers will not have problems finding what they need when they come looking for it in-store or online at any given time during the year (or seasons).
If products aren't being sold as quickly as expected then additional amounts may need purchasing before this happens again which incurs additional costs onto both parties involved (you sell less because there wasn't enough on hand originally but now have to reorder more supplies across several orders over many months before seeing any significant improvements).
Creating a standardized operating procedure manual for your warehouse operations is a good idea.
This is not just for the benefit of your employees and customers, but also for yourself. You need to be able to prove that you're following proper procedures if ever someone comes around asking about it.
Having a well-documented procedure manual can help answer any questions like: "Why did you do this?" or "What were the steps between point A and point B?" It's much easier than trying to explain something from memory, especially if it was done quickly without having time to write anything down at the time (or when there are multiple people being interviewed).
If your company currently does not have a Quality Management / Assurance department and currently your Warehouse / Warehouse does not yet have a clear SOP so that it runs according to employee 'customs', or vice versa SOP is available but is not possible to be practiced in Warehouse operations, what would it be like? will happen?
Some of my findings that such incidents occur very often and the impact of the 'obscurity' of the SOP are:
Leakage of company assets in the warehouse in various types of irregularities due to the absence of clear SOP guidelines.
Work culture 'at will' by superiors or culture 'hereditary', where this results in demotivation for employees below who definitely want a standardization of work.
Non-standard quality of work. Different people who do the work will be treated differently, so the quality of work depends on the 'person' and not on the 'system'.
To avoid the three things above, of course, one SOP document is needed as a standard work guide for all employees who work in the Warehouse.
Especially for small and medium scale industries for a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for Warehousing, for that in this article in general we try to share one of the one example Warehousing SOP in detail.
Example of a Warehousing Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the operation of Receiving Goods in the Warehouse:
On page-1 the SOP is a document history sheet that explains the history of the SOP from when it was first created, revision-1, revision-2 and so on, including changes made every part. Page-1 of this SOP also contains the SOP approval sheet.
At the top (header) the SOP contains the following: company logo on the top left, SOP title, effective SOP, document description. The top of the SOP is the same section for the next page, only changes in the page pointer.
On page-2 (or later) of the SOP contains information: Purpose of the SOP, Scope of SOP, Person in Charge of SOP, Definitions and abbreviations of the terms in the SOP. This section is needed to find out SOP information that cannot be presented in a visual diagram (on the next page).
On page-3 (or later) of the SOP, it can be said that it is the most important part because it contains all process flow information from activities according to the title of the SOP (in this case the receipt of goods).
Divided into 3 columns: Activities, Documents / Quality Records and Information. The Activities section shows the step-by-step process for the goods receiving activity. Documents / Quality Records provide information on what documents are involved in each stage. The Description section shows detailed notes and definitions at each stage of the process.
In general, some of the things above describe the contents of the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) of Warehousing in the activity of receiving goods, of course after these processes there are still other operational activities in the warehouse, such as: Put Away, Picking / Packing, Checking, Loading, Dispatching, Return , Stock Taking / Cycle Count, etc.
Some consultant like Excelogic Consulting and Training together with professional experts in the field of quality management systems (ISO) provide consulting services for making Procedures (SOP) and Work Instructions (WI) to help companies have detailed and detailed Procedures (SOP) and Work Instructions (WI) and of course can be run by employees in the warehouse.
Excelogic helps not only support until the making of Procedures (SOP) and Work Instructions (WI) but also all documents related to SOPs (Form and Reporting) as well as assisting the implementation phase (gap analysis, internal audit, design improvement) and post implementation (surveillance). ).
As a result, it is hoped that the Company will obtain clear and detailed standards so that it can then make significant improvements along the Company's business process flow.
That is an article about Warehousing Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). Hopefully, it will useful to you.
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