Like most businesses around the world, you probably have a sizable amount of goods stored in a warehouse. Whether you’re using a public warehouse or an in-house facility, goods that sit in storage can impact your company’s bottom line if the warehouse space is not used efficiently. There are three main areas where warehouse space can impact your company’s net profits. See where your business stands in warehouse efficiency and follow the tips to improve the effectiveness of how you store your goods.

1. Warehouse Setup

Organizing goods based on their usage is key to efficient warehouse storage capacity. It involves much more than just accepting pallets, crates, and boxes and placing them in whatever space is available to fit them. Rather, warehouse setup needs to reflect order and product activity profiles.

Serious production time is lost when workers have to search a warehouse to find products to fill an order, or move around pallets, crates, or boxes to get to those needed for multi-order batch picking. An ineffective storage setup also increases the risk of damage to goods and errors in filling orders.

Tip: Leave the storing of your goods to a public warehouse. Your business will realize savings from highly efficient warehouse storage and order fulfillment processes.

For example, Brendamour Warehousing, Distribution & Services is a third-party logistics (3PL) warehouse that is equipped with highly advanced equipment and complex computer systems to configure the most efficient layout of your goods within our facility. This takes into consideration various picking and packing strategies, including order lines, order mix, and order size, so the most efficient storage method is utilized.

2. Working Capacity

Working capacity is how much storage a space can hold based on the configuration of the physical space and inventory characteristics, such as the size and shape of items. Most businesses think their storage facility is running at full capacity when in reality, it’s probably around 60 to 80 percent. Failure to run a warehouse at full working capacity costs a business money, especially if a second facility is purchased or rented to handle overload from a warehouse that isn’t even at working capacity.

Tip: Outsource your storage needs to public warehousing experts who specialize in calculating and meeting working capacity. They know how to accurately configure the storage lanes in a warehouse for efficiency in storing inventory based on numerous factors, including the number of different items, their size, volume, and picking requirements.

Brendamour Warehousing uses a very sophisticated warehouse management system that collects the right kind of data and analyzes it to produce extremely accurate utilization reports of your storage area within our facility. We also use warehousing methods, such as floor-stacked bulk storage and customized racking systems to maximize the amount of square footage of your goods. The perfect balance between space utilization and operation productivity ensures full working capacity, delivering savings to your business.

3. Warehousing to Picking Strategy

When it comes to locating, pulling, and packing products for distribution, a warehouse that is aligned with picking strategies operates more effectively. Picking strategies are based on the most common way customers order your goods, such as high and low volume products, the number of units, and the percentage of order lines that require full or broken cartons, single units, full pallets, or any combination of these options.

Knowing your product activity allows you to warehouse to picking and packing, reducing your costs by running an efficient operation.

Tip: Third party logistics (3PL) providers provide both warehousing space and order fulfillment functions. They are equipped with a warehouse management system and automated equipment to identify your order profiles and arrange warehousing and picking methods based on these profiles.

For example, as a 3PL, Brendamour Warehousing performs comprehensive order management and order release approaches, such as single order picking, multi-order batch picking, zone, wave, and order consolidation. What’s more, our expertise allows us to provide your business with a picking strategy that is highly optimized for cost savings.

We are equipped to implement a variety of pick lines depending on your products’ type and volume. They include automated and manual systems, such as straight line, serpentine line, branch and pick zone, pick to conveyor, automated storage and retrieval (AS/AR), automated conveyors, and automated carousels, and pick-to-light.

Go With Brendamour, the Warehousing Pros

At Brendamour Warehousing, Distribution & Services, our business is your business. More specifically, we’re all about performing effective warehousing, distribution, and other logistics functions to improve your company’s bottom line.

Learn more on how we can maximize your company’s bottom line with our warehousing, distribution and logistics services. Contact us today to see what an effective and efficient public warehouse space can mean to your business!